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C^e poung jEau'g #ffait# 



The Young Man's 
Affairs 



BY 



CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN 

AUTHOR OP 

"THE SOCIAL MESSAGE OP THE MODERN PULPIT, " 

U THE MAIN POINTS,' 1 "TWO PARABLES, 11 AND 

"THE STRANGE WAYS OP GOD 11 



f 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 






Copyright, 1909, by Thomas Y. Crowell 8? Co. 

Published September, 1909 



CI.A 244G65 
AU310 1909 



TITLES OF CHAPTERS 



I. His Main Purpose Page 3 

II. His Intimates 23 

III. His Books 45 

IV. His Money 69 
V. His Kecreations 91 

VI. His Wife 115 

VII. His Church 139 



jpfg jttafn pmpo&z 



[i] 



CHAPTER FIRST 

f ig jEain purpose 




OU will agree with me at 
the outset that no man is 
apt to arrive unless he has 
a fairly distinct idea as to 
where he is going. You 
can steer a ship that is 
moving, every part of it brought under the 
power of some impelling force — even if it is 
headed wrong it can be turned around. You 
cannot do anything with a ship that is drift- 
ing — it simply lies in the trough of the sea 
beaten and tossed. You can do almost any- 
thing with a young man who is possessed by 
a purpose. If that purpose in certain par- 
ticulars is a mistaken one, he can be faced 
about. But it is hard to do anything with 
those human derelicts who are just drifting 
along waiting to see what will happen to 
them instead of being up and out to make 
things happen on their own account. In this 

m 



C^e ^oimg j&an'g affair 

first address to young men, therefore, I shall 
speak of the vital importance of a definite 
purpose. 

The real purpose organizes the various ele- 
ments of a man's life for effective action. A 
pile of steel filings and shavings lying on the 
floor of a foundry may be fine in quality, 
they may weigh a ton when put upon the 
scales, but unorganized they have little value. 
Organize and weld them into a shaft, attach 
one end of the shaft to an engine, and the 
other to a screw propeller, and it will send 
a mighty ocean liner from New York to Liv- 
erpool in five days. Bring all those bits of 
steel under the organizing power of a pur- 
pose and they become effective. In like man- 
ner a mind, a heart, a soul, is nothing more 
than a confused heap of thoughts and wishes, 
impulses and desires, longings and aspira- 
tions, until by the power of a purpose all 
these are brought into unity and made ef- 
fective in their thrust toward some worthy 
fulfilment. 

More than that the very fact of a purpose, 
[4] 



f fg jHain $uqpoge 



high and fine, far-reaching and commanding, 
in the heart of a man exercises a potent in- 
fluence upon the world without. David Starr 
Jordan likes to say, " The world makes way 
for the man who knows where he is going." 
On the crowded sidewalk no one ever thinks 
of swerving an inch for the dawdler who is 
just sauntering along to kill time. Everyone 
is ready to give half the sidewalk or more 
for the man who shows by his look and bear- 
ing that he is bound somewhere with a defi- 
nite purpose in mind. You will find that the 
same principle holds good through life — in 
the busiest bank, in the largest railroad office, 
in the factories which turn out products by 
the trainload, in all the learned professions, 
people are not only willing but eager to make 
room for the man with a purpose. 
I am not disturbed, therefore, when I see 
young men consumed with impossible ambi- 
tions, eaten up with aspirations which may 
never reach fulfilment, straining every nerve 
to accomplish what may not be worthy of 
such an effort. They are in the Freshman 
[5] 



C^e ^oima jHait'js affair 

year, and long before they reach the Senior 
class in this big University we call human 
life, they will be straightened out. 
I am troubled at the sight of young men who 
have no definite aims. You will find them in 
every country town sitting around the rail- 
road station to watch the trains come in and 
go out, or talking small talk through the 
livelong afternoon in a grocery store because 
they have not enough strength of mind to do 
anything else. You will find them in the city 
hanging around the cigar stores to watch 
some man play the nickel-in-the-slot machine, 
or in the five-cent theaters, or spending af- 
ternoons at the " Orpheum " as if they had 
already attained such success in life that 
they could afford to spend daylight hours in 
watching a few people do clever stunts at 
fifteen or twenty dollars a week. You will 
find them spending whole afternoons and 
evenings counting red and black spots, as if 
nowhere on earth was there anything vital 
to engage their powers. You will find them 
looking at print — not reading, let us save 
[6] 



P$ iftafn puvpozz 



that good word for honest intellectual effort 
— and such print as could have no value 
whatsoever for tomorrow's life. I cannot tell 
you all the places where you will find them — 
there is an army of them, some of them earn- 
ing their own livings after a fashion, some 
of them still sponging on their fathers or liv- 
ing on money inherited. If you were to ask 
any one of them, " What is your purpose in 
life? " he would be utterly nonplussed. 
You will find also another type of these pur- 
poseless men. They are not dawdlers nor 
idlers; they have red blood in their veins, 
quarts of it. They are brim full of energy. 
There is something doing with them every 
hour in the day and a good share of the 
night. They are full of interest and enthu- 
siasm, but the trouble is their lives are as 
Amiel said, " a mass of beginnings and end- 
ings." There is a lack of continuity and of 
direction ; the various elements have not been 
brought under the mastery of a clearcut, 
definite purpose. They are " bound nowhere 
under full sail." 

[7] 



%\>t ^oung jftan'g &Uait$ 

Dean Swift used to tell this story on himself. 
He had been out of town and was returning 
to perform a marriage ceremony. His train 
was late, and when he reached the station at 
Dublin it lacked only a few minutes of the 
hour of the wedding. He ran out and jumped 
into a jaunting car, calling out to the cab- 
man, " Drive like Jehu ! I am late now and 
have only a few minutes to get there." The 
man gave his horse a cut and was off down 
the street in a gallop. The Dean held on with 
both hands as the little open jaunting car 
pitched about, and presently called out to 
the man, " Where are you going? " " I don't 
know, sir," was the reply ; " you didn't say 
where I was to go, but I'm driving like 
Jehu." 

You will find young fellows in every city, 
with splendid capacity, able to move through 
the streets of solid achievement at a telling 
pace, but no definite word of command has 
been spoken as yet to their restless activity. 
They do not know where they are going; 
there is no compelling purpose behind all 
[8] 



^te jftain purport 



this show of action. They are merely driving 
like Jehu with no sufficient aim. 
When a man is lost in the woods and wants 
to get home, the most important question is 
not, " Am I walking, or running, or riding 
a fast horse?" The important question is, 
"Am I faced right? Am I moving straight 
ahead and not merely circling around and 
around?" It is imperative that you should 
have some end in view. You cannot read 
everything, or buy everything, or enjoy 
everything, or see everything. You may, if 
you choose, make the vain attempt, circling 
around until the best years of your life are 
gone and you are back where you started. 
But if you intend to get out of the woods of 
uncertain and purposeless effort into the 
open of noble and useful achievement, you 
must exercise the power of selection, content 
to leave whole areas off to the right and to 
the left, as you pursue the commanding pur- 
pose of your life. 

When you ride across the State of Nebraska 

on the Union Pacific you are impressed with 

19] 



C^e ^oimg pLan'g affair 

the queer ways of the Platte River. It is a 
broad, slow, easygoing stream, not carrying 
a very great volume of water, but spread out 
thin over a good deal of territory. Because 
the slant of the country is so slight it has 
not much movement nor current. In early 
days when the soil of western Nebraska was 
even looser than it is now, owing to the 
scanty vegetation, the Platte sometimes 
shifted its course for miles within a few days. 
On Monday morning a man might be en- 
camped upon the north side, but by Saturday 
night he might be living on the south side 
without ever moving his tent. How different 
all that is from the river Columbia flowing 
strongly between steep, high banks, the only 
stream that has cut its way through that 
mountain chain which begins up in Alaska 
and extends all the way down to the lower 
end of Mexico. The Columbia shows you that 
it is a river with a purpose and you know 
where to find it every day in the year ! It is 
a river that does things ! 
I would say to every young man, beware of 
[10] 



I£te jttain putpogt 



that easy versatility which turns readily 
from one channel to another, from one job 
to another, from one line of life to some- 
thing entirely different. If you find yourself 
equally handy at a dozen different pursuits, 
it is time you called a halt. When a young 
man comes to me to discuss his future I ask 
him, " What do you want to do ? " If he re- 
plies, " Anything, 55 I am almost as much dis- 
appointed as if he had said, " Nothing. 55 Men 
who are content to do anything will usually 
be shoved off into some corner to do nothing 
before they get through. " This one thing I 
do, 55 said the man who wrote his influence 
upon the life of his generation more pro- 
foundly than any other save the Master 
whom he served. He was not ready to do any- 
thing, but he could do this one thing well. 
I have discussed the general importance of 
having a definite purpose long enough; now 
what are some of the particular purposes 
which exercise their mastery over young 
men? 
There is first of all the thought of having a 

[11 j 



C^e poimg jftan'g &Uait$ 

good time. " I want to have my full share of 
the physical and other delights which are 
open to men." When you find a young fel- 
low in the wrong place he is commonly there 
because he doesn't want to miss anything— 
he wants to see life. " I want to have all the 
amusements and recreations, outdoor and in- 
door sports, within my reach. I want to read 
enjoyable books, hear enjoyable music, and 
see the most enjoyable plays that come to 
town. I want to have as many social good 
times as I can. I want to travel and see as 
much of the world as I may. In a word, I 
want to enjoy life to the full as far as I can 
compass it." 

This is not an evil purpose in itself. You can 
put evil things into it just as you can pack 
pistols and dynamite, or loaded dice and 
gambler's cards into a good dress-suit case 
in place of the things that an honest trav- 
eler wants to carry. But the purpose to 
have a good time is not in itself evil. The 
pursuit of happiness, the gaining of pleasure 
in the exercise of one's powers, is not only 
[12] 



1$i$ piain purpose 



permissible, but imperative, if we are to live 
up to our best. The sour-faced people who 
cannot eat anything with relish, nor see any- 
thing without finding fault with it, nor laugh 
at anything without apologizing to their 
consciences, nor take unmodified pleasure in 
any of the experiences which come, have al- 
together missed the meaning of life, even 
though they may be as coldly correct in the 
performance of certain duties as were the 
Pharisees of old. Happiness, high, fine, real, 
is God's own seal upon the right use of our 
powers. Even the sober old catechism had it 
right. " The chief end of man is to glorify 
God and enjoy him" — as the sum of all the 
forces, realities and opportunities there are 
— " forever." 

But happiness, after all, is an incident and 
not the main consideration. He that saveth 
his happiness by aiming for it directly all 
the time will lose it. He that loseth sight of 
his happiness in his devotion to certain ends 
which are fundamental shall find it. If you 
set out to make your main purpose that of 
[IS] 



C^e goung jflatt'g affaitg 

having a good time, you will miss other more 
important things and in the end you will 
miss the good time itself. The young man 
who does his work in the store or shop or 
office thinking more of the evening's pleas- 
ures which are at the end of the day than of 
the work he is doing, will be sitting out some- 
where on a big high stool thirty years from 
now when the young fellow who is thinking 
more about his work than about the even- 
ing's pleasures will be sitting in the direc- 
tors' meeting deciding whether or not the 
salary of the other man shall be increased. A 
good time is not sufficient to furnish a funda- 
mental purpose. 

There is also the purpose of making money. 
" Money talks," and to many people it has 
the most interesting things to say. It is 
money that makes possible all those pleas- 
ures and amusements. It is money that 
builds the home and fills it with beautiful 
furniture and lovely clothing for those we 
love. It is money that puts books on a man's 
shelves and pictures on the walls. It is 
[14] 



fig piain $utpo$t 



money that opens the way for automobiles 
and yachts and all the rest of it. It is money 
that makes possible extensive travel, so that 
a man's consciousness is enlarged and his 
sympathetic touch with life broadened by his 
having seen many lands, many peoples, many 
forms of civilization. " Money is every- 
thing, 95 people say, " therefore put money 
in thy purse." 

It is not an evil purpose. It, too, may have 
evil things packed into it — this is often the 
case, but it is not necessary. A man who is 
content to live in poverty when the way is 
open for him to live in comfort through ex- 
tra exertion, is either lazy, or foolish, or 
wicked, perhaps all three. It is a legitimate 
and laudable ambition to wish to compass 
the joy and exercise the power that pros- 
perity brings. I am frank to say that it cost 
me a struggle to go into the ministry, and 
one of the things which held me back for a 
long time was the thought that I could never 
be rich — no minister is ever rich unless he 
inherits or marries his money. I would urge 
[15] 



C^e goiing jftan'g Maitg 

every young man to strive with all his might 
to succeed financially in order that he may 
have the joy of providing generously for his 
own tastes and for the tastes of others who 
may share in his prosperity. 
But the mere purpose of making money is 
not large enough to have the best energies 
of a young man's life committed into its 
keeping. It leaves whole areas of his nature 
unprovided for. What would you think of a 
clergyman, or a physician, or a teacher, or 
a soldier, who confessed to you that his main 
ambition was to make money. He would be 
discredited in your eyes at once. Why, then, 
should the merchant or the manufacturer ac- 
cept for himself such a fundamental aim ? It 
is because business has not yet been moralized 
to the same degree as the profession of the 
ministry or medicine, of teaching or of mili- 
tary life. The day is coming, however, when 
the ambition to make money unrelieved by 
worthier aims set over it, will seem so utterly 
sordid as to make any self-respecting man 
unwilling to confess such a purpose. Making 
[16] 



pg jEatn purport 



a living is one thing, making a life is quite 
another thing — it is altogether higher, vast- 
er and more alluring. 

There is also the purpose of getting to the 
front. I wish to succeed, some young man 
says, and by that I do not mean mere mate- 
rial success. I want to have friends, hosts of 
them ; a nice home and a good family. I want 
to hold a good place in society. I want to 
be esteemed by my fellow citizens and have 
some honorable position in my city, my state, 
if possible, my nation. I want to accomplish 
something that men will remember when I am 
gone, in literature, in the development of the 
resources of my community, or in charitable 
and philanthropic effort. I wish to enjoy the 
gratitude and esteem of my fellow men. 
There is no fault to be found with this pur- 
pose. Indeed, the young man who has not 
something of all these purposes is not a nor- 
mal man. But they do not touch bottom. All 
these purposes that I have named, to have a 
good time, to make money, to achieve a wor- 
thy success, are legitimate, but subordinate. 
[ 17 ] 



C^e poung iftan'g &Uatt$ 

They are the incidentals of right living, but 
they do not furnish the supreme motive. Let 
me turn, then, to One who wrought His 
splendid achievements and made His deep im- 
press upon the life of the race, writing His 
name above every name, while He was yet 
young — He was put to death when He was 
only thirty-three. Let me turn to Him for a 
purpose which is fundamental. 
" I come to do the will of Him that sent me." 
He believed that behind all these phenomena 
there is an intelligent and moral purpose. 
He believed in God. And He believed that 
included in that infinite purpose there was a 
particular purpose for His individual life. 
He found the essential aim of His own ex- 
istence in the fulfilment of that purpose 
which lies behind all we see. I come to act, 
to think, to grow, to live in the fulfilment of 
an eternal purpose underlying my life and 
all lives — here we find an aim worthy to take 
command of our best strength! 
Here we do touch bottom. The doing of the 
will of Him who sent us will mean in the 
[18] 



ipfe piatn pmpozz 



grand outcome a good time of such extent 
and elevation as eye hath not seen nor ear 
heard. It will mean gain, treasures of the 
sort that men lay up in the world of perma- 
nent and transcendent values. It will mean 
getting to the front in an enduring success, 
which will put the crown of glory on the 
head of every man who attains. It will in- 
clude all that is high, fine, lasting in pleas- 
ure, knowledge, action and worth. I am here 
for that! 

If you are clear-headed and honest-hearted 
you cannot stop this side of such an aim 
when once you begin to think. You must 
build your life worthily into that universal 
and eternal plan which lies in the mind and 
heart of Him who sent you. To do that is 
to live, and nothing less than that will suffice. 
Take that as your main purpose and you will 
never rue it. 

" Greatly begin, 
Though thou have time but for a line 
Make that one line forever sublime. 
Not failure, but low aim is crime." 
[19] 



€Ije goung j&m'S affair 

There are shortsighted men who can see 
across the street, but they cannot see their 
way across the field of human effort. They 
can look ahead for fifteen minutes, but not 
for fifteen years. You cannot afford to 
travel in that class. If you catch the vision 
of this young Man, who came to do the will 
of the One who sent Him, you will indeed see 
far ahead. And when once you have accepted 
His life purpose to do the will of Him who 
sends you, all your pleasures and associa- 
tions, all your duties and privileges will be- 
come not pools signifying nothing beyond 
themselves, but flowing tributaries to the 
main stream of your purposeful life, which, 
like the river of God, will make glad the 
whole city of your diversified interests. Take 
from the lips of the Lord Christ the control- 
ling purpose of your life, and you will live 
strongly and well and forever! 



[20] 



W intimates 



[21] 



CHAPTER SECOND 



f i$ gjntimateg 




GROUP of friends well 
chosen, thoroughly trusted 
and firmly held can bestow 
upon a young man's life 
benefits inestimable. The 
touch and rub of life upon 
life in the intimacy of a fine friendship serves 
to bring a man up to a higher level of 
efficiency. 

When a young man goes to High School or 
College he matriculates not in one school, but 
in three. I name them in what I believe to be 
the ascending order of their importance. He 
goes to school first to his books, his own text 
books and the books in the library which he 
may be led to read and those other books to 
which he may be introduced and thus be in- 
clined to read later. 

He goes to school to his instructors — not 

dry as dust men who merely impart informa- 

[23] 



C^e poung jman'g &Uatt$ 

tion like the Britannica or teach subjects as 
some well-oiled pedagogical machine might 
do, but live instructors, large-minded, great- 
souled men who make their subjects glow 
with light and burn with warmth; men who 
arouse and mature and enrich the whole in- 
ner life of the young people who come within 
the length of their cable tow. One great 
teacher, Shaler at Harvard, Remsen at Johns 
Hopkins, Harper at Chicago, Jordan at 
Stanford, does not take up as much space as 
a library, but pour him out upon a campus 
full of young men and he does more to in- 
spire and instruct than all the books in the 
stack. 

In the third place he goes to school to his 
fellow students. The average young man 
takes for good or ill, color and odor, direc- 
tion and aspiration, from his intimates in the 
fraternity house or on the athletic field, in 
the class room and in the laboratory, in the 
easy touch and go of social life, more than 
from all his books or his professors. This is 
my own judgment based on many years 
[24] 



fte gjntimates 



spent in and around universities as student, 
as lecturer and as the friend of the boys. I 
could bring you, if I chose, corroboration 
from more college presidents and professors 
than I would have time to name in this half 
hour. 

You will find the same thing is true in that 
larger university where there is a continuous 
performance of education going on, the uni- 
versity we call " Life." Books speak to the 
young man who is willing to sit down and 
listen. The appointed instructors at home, 
in school, in the church can accomplish much 
if their work is well done. But after all the 
young fellow's intimates, the boys and girls, 
the men and women with whom he associates, 
by their prevailing moods, by the purposes 
which really dominate their lives, by the at- 
mosphere they carry, exercise the most po- 
tent influence of all. " Iron sharpeneth iron, 
so a man sharpeneth," or dulleth, " the coun- 
tenance of his friend." You may ruin a 
razor permanently with a file in five minutes ; 
so the fine edge of character may be speedily 
[25] 



C^e ^otmg jHan's Mait$ 

nicked or turned by those powerful personal 
influences which emanate from intimate asso- 
ciation. 

You cannot afford then to drop into your 
friendships as an apple drops from the tree 
into green grass or filth as the case may be 
because it cannot choose. You cannot afford 
to drift into a certain set of associates by 
force of circumstances as if you had no 
power to steer your intimacies. There are 
eighty millions of people in this country to 
go no further — you cannot know them all 
and you would not want to if you could. 
There are more than two hundred thousand 
people in this town — you can only know a 
small percentage of that number intimately. 
You must choose, therefore, and if you 
would have the mighty power of intimate as- 
sociation a help and not a hindrance, you 
must choose wisely. 

It requires thought and care to develop a 
fine friendship. It will not grow of itself like 
a weed — it is an orchid, rare, beautiful, 
costly. Luther Burbank in producing new 
[26] 



f te intimates 



and useful forms of flower and fruit found 
there was no way by which pollen could be 
applied and made effective in certain cross- 
fertilizations except by his own bare, skilled 
hand. No tool, no machine, no wind of 
chance would accomplish it. It required the 
touch of his own personal life. You cannot 
fashion the friendships you need by the wind 
of chance or by the coarse mechanism of con- 
ventional social life or by the rude accident 
of business relations — the bare touch of your 
own mind and heart going forth in the proc- 
ess of thoughtful, conscientious selection is 
needed if you would know intimacy with your 
fellows at its best. 

I make it a point to urge every young man 
to make a great many friends in early life. 
You need them now and you will need them 
still more as the years go. Some will die. 
Some will remove from your vicinage. Some, 
Alas! will disappoint you. It is good to 
know a great many people and out of them 
select a number of real friends so that as you 
grow older you will not be left alone, for 
[ 27 1 



C^e poimg jttan'g affaftg 

you will find there are no friendships like 
those which are formed in early life. If you 
are to be a salesman, a banker, a lawyer, a 
doctor or a man with political aspirations, 
the more friends the better. And all aside 
from the advantage which will come to you 
in your chosen work, the very esteem and 
confidence of many people will in the end 
bring enlargement and enrichment to your 
own heart. 

You hear the expression " selfmade man." It 
is a useless phrase — there is none such. If 
there ever were, they are an extinct race now 
like dodos. In every successful life, parents, 
teachers and friends, writers, speakers and 
singers, actors, preachers and all the rest, 
have made their deposits of influence. The 
strong life grows rich as the bank does by 
having many people flow up to it and make 
some deposit in it. The main point is to see 
to it that their deposits are good money and 
not counterfeit, for the more you live the 
more you will take from those with whom 
you associate. 

[28] 



f te gintfoiateg 



That ancient ecclesiastical ceremony called 
" the laying on of hands " in the ordination 
of a young man to the Christian ministry 
was a beautiful testimony to the power and 
contagion of personal influence. It was not 
intended to be a magical thing as if when the 
Bishop and elders laid their hands upon the 
head of the candidate some mysterious in- 
fluence passed making him now competent to 
instruct men in righteousness or minister the 
comfort of divine grace. It was the outward 
and visible sign of something inward and 
spiritual. The young man, be he ever so en- 
ergetic, brainy and devout, could not go 
forth and succeed in his own strength. He 
must receive from men as well as from God — 
from God mainly through men — those po- 
tent and holy influences which would mature 
and enrich his own power to serve. In form- 
ing your own intimacies let the hands of 
many wise and good men be laid upon you 
early, repeatedly, continuously that you may 
be ordained to a splendid life of honor and 
usefulness. 

[29] 



C&e potrng jftan'g Mait$ 

In making choice of those intimates, I 
would suggest a few principles. Friends, the 
more the better and they may cover a wide 
range! Intimates, not very many and these 
selected with the greatest care! I know a 
great many people around this Bay, all sorts 
and kinds; some of them are drunkards, 
liars, libertines, thieves. They count me a 
friend and I am profoundly glad to have it 
so. I think now of a young fellow whom I 
know well who showed himself a thief repeat- 
edly, but he is pulling up out of it to-day 
splendidly and I look forward to the hour 
when he will stand forth, honest and true, 
able to look the whole world in the face. I 
know a great many people, but my intimates, 
the men and women whose lives come close to 
my own, to whom I open my mind and heart 
freely, are not drunkards and libertines, 
liars and thieves. I want my intimates to be 
of another sort. 

You can be on good terms with a great many 

people whose fundamental attitude toward 

life does not match your own. You cannot 

[30] 



f (0 gjntfmates 



afford to be on intimate terms with a man 
who is lacking in reverence, in unimpeachable 
honesty, in profound respect for womanly 
purity or in definite, serious purpose. These 
are the four cardinal attitudes, toward God, 
toward the truth, toward woman, toward 
oneself. You cannot afford to have intimates 
lacking in reverence, in honesty, in purity, in 
purpose. The color and the odor such men 
leave would cling to you also. You need for 
intimates those who are clearly and strongly 
on the side of right. 

It is well to cut out at the start all those 
friendships which require champagne glasses 
and beer steins to keep them going. There 
is nothing useful to be gotten out of such in- 
timacies. You cannot gather grapes of 
thorns or figs from thistles. A great com- 
pany of enthusiastic young fellows with just 
as much cleverness and just as little experi- 
ence of life as you have, believed they could. 
They tried it out to a finish and they came 
forth not with grapes or figs, but with their 
hands, their minds and their hearts full of 
I 31 J. 



C^e gouttg pian'$ Maiv$ 

ugly briers rapidly developing into festering 
sores. It cannot be done — the experiment 
has been fully made and there is no need for 
you to waste your time and money and good 
name in making it again. 
It is just as well to cut out of your list of 
intimates the young fellow whose main pur- 
pose seems to be to spend as much time as 
possible in and around automobiles. The 
auto is a good servant when it is under the 
control of skill and conscience. It is a terri- 
ble menace to life and property when the 
steering gear is wanting or out of order and 
it runs uncontrolled. It is a terrible master 
when it wields such a fascination over the 
heart and purse of a young man who thinks 
of it by day when he ought to be working 
with all the strength of mind he can bring 
to bear and then spends the hours needed for 
sleep in devoting himself to it by night. The 
average garage is not a place of light and 
leading — it has been the pathway downward 
for a considerable number of young men who 
" might have been." That is all they will 
[ 8* J 



f (3 91ntt'matejs 



ever be now — " might have beens." Young 
fellows are being tricked out of their futures 
by this new device with speed and smell which 
we call an automobile. You can afford to cut 
out of your list of intimates the young men 
afflicted with serious cases of " autophobia " 
— they will never be heard from in any favor- 
able way in the great round up. 
It is just as well to cut out those friends who 
live uniformly in the flippant mood. Fun is 
as wholesome in its way as food. The sense 
of humor is as necessary as the sense of 
honor to make up a complete man. But it 
is to be regarded always as the spice of life, 
the pepper, mustard and cinnamon, not the 
roast beef, or the bread and potatoes on 
which we live. Life as a whole, when you add 
it all up and strike a trial balance, is nof 
funny. It is serious business and the flippant 
chap misses all the finer phases of it. The 
world does not put into his keeping its more 
valued interests. The joker is not the best 
card in the pack except by an artificial rule 
and in all the better games it is thrown out 
[S3] 



C^e puttQ jftan'g affairs 

altogether. Many a young fellow has turned 
himself down flat and hard and finally by 
being " too flip." He learned it in circles of 
intimates where flippancy was regarded as 
the main excellence. ^Many a girl has giggled 
herself out of all possibility of marrying a 
man who could have given her position, 
honor, enrichment, enduring happiness — such 
men do not take machines to their homes 
whose records are all flippant talk and 
giggle. 

You need friends who by their finer insight 
and their hidden faith idealize you. They 
take you as they know you, as you are, but 
behind you, within you, and above you, they 
see another possible man. They are looking 
eagerly and waiting patiently for that man 
to emerge. By their expectation and their 
faith they help him out into the world. They 
are constantly saying what the master of the 
house said in the parable, " Friend, go up 
higher." You discover yourself anew in their 
very attitude toward some of your rawness 
and inexperience — you long to make the re- 
[8*1 



f i$ 31nt(matejs 



ality match with their faith in your capacity. 
It is deadly in the long run not to have that 
quality in our friends. " I do enjoy spending 
the evening with Fannie," one young fellow 
said to another ; " she always makes me feel 
so satisfied with myself." Yes, there are Fan- 
nies innumerable sitting invitingly on the 
sofas here and there, but the only qualities 
which they call out in the young men who 
take that easy road are not the best that is 
in them. 

No young man ever grows strong until peo- 
ple begin to take stock in him, believe in him 
and honor him by their friendship. It is like 
the call of God to enter upon a nobler life — 
it is the call of God, for God speaks most 
commonly through men. You know the story 
of Burns and Sir Walter Scott. Burns was 
twelve years older than Scott and coming 
into his fame early had made his name one to 
be conjured with in Scotland when Sir Wal- 
ter was unknown. One night at the home of 
a friend Burns found some lines written on 
a slip of paper and pinned under a portrait. 
[35] 



.^^ i,..i .'■-,. - .:. -jo.....' .- . ., , , • 



C^e ^oimg jttan'g affair 

When he inquired as to the author* the name 
of Scott was whispered to him. He went to 
the young man and with that great warm 
heart, which has won him friends everywhere 
the sun shines, said, " You will be a great 
man in Scotland, my lad ; you have it in you 
to be a writer." Scott, a timid, tow-headed, 
awkward boy went home and cried all night 
for joy at the recognition he had received 
from the famous poet. And the confidence 
of the older man, his expectancy on behalf 
of his youthful friend, aided in calling him 
forth into a splendid career. 
You need those maturer friendships with 
both men and women which may be yours if 
you will have it so. You are missing the 
mark if you think that men with a little gray 
hair showing above their ears have no taste 
for the friendship of young fellows whose 
use of the razor at present is a matter of 
expectant faith rather than of immediate 
necessity. The older man knows all you know 
and a lot besides. He has felt all you feel 
and his memory is keener than you think ; he 
[36] 



$te Slutimate^ 



can enter into it sympathetically and take 
your point of view until he shows you a bet- 
ter one in a way that would amaze you. The 
professor at the head of the department 
where you are studying; the man of affairs 
at the head of the bank or the department 
store where you work ; the man of wisdom on 
your street whom you could know if you 
would — nine out of ten of these men crave 
closer contact and more open friendship with 
the young fellows if those chaps did not seem 
to shy off whenever an older man makes a 
move toward them. 

The best friend any young man has among 
women is his own mother unless she has made 
herself unworthy to wear that title of honor. 
But he may be away from home or his 
mother may be dead — then it is good to have 
friends among women who have lived longer 
than has the girl with the pink cheeks and 
the blue ribbons. The young fellow who can- 
not enjoy himself in talking with any woman 
unless she is five years younger than he is 
and is possessed of a pretty face and a slen- 
[37] 



eije poun& jftan'g affair 

der waist, is not all there. The friendship of 
noble women where it is all in the clear, open 
and above board is a splendid privilege. 
I feel as you do that those married women 
who, for the sake of having the excitement 
of lovemaking prolonged, take advantage of 
the security of their position to keep dan- 
gling after them a lot of young fellows 
whose Platonic friendship is always just on 
the verge of becoming something else — I feel 
that they ought to be hooted out of decent 
society. The young men who do the dan- 
gling are soft-headed, sappy, cowardly fools, 
but the married woman is a sneak and a 
cheat. I mean nothing of that sort, but the 
friendship of a noble woman, nobly enjoyed 
has power to change the prose of life into 
poetry and the water into wine. All his 
aspirations and yearnings may, because of 
her ennobling influence, take on a higher 
value. 

I would like to say a word to young men and 

to older people as to the high privilege and 

imperative duty of opening the door to these 

[38] 



f ijs gjntimateg 



maturer friendships. Dr. James I. Vance 
basing his computations on the census report 
of 1900 claims that in any American city of 
over one hundred thousand inhabitants one- 
fifth of the population will be young men be- 
tween the ages of sixteen and thirty. In the 
city where I live that would make forty thou- 
sand young men. Cut it in two if you think 
that is too high and we have twenty thou- 
sand young men here, with a large percent- 
age of them away from home. What an op- 
portunity! What a responsibility! 
In a recent address of Bishop Hughes he 
spoke of a deacon in a certain Congrega- 
tional church in Boston, who many years 
ago said to himself, " I cannot speak in 
prayer meeting. I cannot do many other 
things in Christian service, but I can put 
two extra plates on my dinner table every 
Sunday and invite two young men who are 
away from home to break bread with me." 
He went along doing that for more than 
thirty years. He became acquainted with a 
great company of young men who were at- 
[39] 






€Ije ^owng jmau'g affair 

tending that church, and many of them 
became Christians through his personal in- 
fluence. When he died recently he was to 
be buried at Andover, thirty miles distant, 
and because he was a well-known merchant 
a special train was chartered to convey the 
funeral party. It was made known that any 
of his friends among the young men who 
had become Christians through his influence 
would be welcomed in a certain car, set aside 
for them ! And a hundred and fifty of them 
came and packed that car from end to end 
to honor the memory of the man who had 
preached to them the gospel of the extra 
dinner plate ! 

" I was a stranger and ye took me in " — it 
was Christ who spoke in that vein in His 
portrayal of the great judgment scene. He 
lifted the grace of kindly hospitality to the 
same high level of service rendered to the 
hungry and the imprisoned. He exalted that 
form of thoughtful kindness and made it for- 
ever significant by insisting that inasmuch as 
it had been done to the least among the 
[40] 



f i$ gintfmateg 



strangers in a great city it had been done 
unto Him. 

I have been speaking thus far of human 
friendships. There is another Friend of a 
higher order whose intimate fellowship you 
cannot afford to miss. It was Lord Chester- 
field, cold, critical, skeptical, but a past mas- 
ter in the fine art of social intercourse, who 
said to his son, " After all there has been 
but one perfect gentleman — the one born in 
Bethlehem of Judea." If you are not ready 
to construe the terms of your own relation- 
ship to the Saviour of men in any other 
form, put it in the form of personal friend- 
ship. He phrased it so. He said, not to a 
group of aged saints waiting for nightfall, 
but to a group of young men eager, active, 
full-blooded, with their careers before them, 
" I call you not servants, I call you friends." 
Take it in that form if you will. Stand be- 
fore the world declaring by the whole pur- 
pose and method of your life that you are a 
friend of Jesus Christ, loyal to Him, yoking 
your life with His for the accomplishment of 



Clje porotg jftan's affairs 

certain desires which you hold in common ! 
His friendship accepted, rejoiced in and ex- 
pressed through useful service will be re- 
warding and ennobling beyond any other 
single influence which may affect your life. 



[42] 



f (0 13006$ 



[«] 



CHAPTER THIRD 
${$ 130060 




OU will find these words in 
a letter written to a young 
man by his friend, by an 
older man who was always 
urging upon him the im- 
portance of sound and 
thorough intellectual development as well as 
a life of integrity — " When thou comest 
bring with thee the books, especially the 
parchments." It is one of many such injunc- 
tions. " Neglect not the gift that is in thee." 
" Give attention to reading." " Study to 
show thyself a workman that need not be 
ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" 
— separating the vital and essential from 
that which is mere ornament and trimming. 
And now as the young man sets out for 
Rome, where the older man was in prison, he 
is asked to bring with him materials for fur- 
ther study. 

I 45 ] 



€^e ^oiwg jttan's &ffaft# 

iAny book that is worth carrying to Rome, 
any book that is worthy of being taken into 
the capital and center of a man's own mind 
and heart ought to be one into which some 
large mind, some great soul has put its best. 
Here is a book that is worth while; into it 
some serious, resourceful, aspiring man has 
put his truest thought, his deepest insight, 
his highest resolve, his holiest yearning! 
It may be history or biography, poetry or 
philosophy, travel or romance, science or re- 
ligion — I care not if it comes from the hand, 
the mind, the heart of a master! It will 
stretch my mind and stir my heart as I strive 
to take its message into my life, " Bring it 
to me," I say to my purse or to the attend- 
ant in the library, or to the friend who will 
loan it ! I need it as Paul of old felt the need 
of the books and parchments which were car- 
ried to Rome, 

A really great book is alive. Cut it anywhere 
and it will bleed. You cannot tell me that 
bugs and worms which crawl on people and 
make them jump have life and that books 
[46] 



P$ 130060 



which move and fire the hearts of men to no- 
ble aspiration, to heroic duty, are without 
life. If you should say so, you would have to 
enlarge your definition of life so that it 
would include not only the things which are 
seen and temporal, but those unseen things 
which are eternal. 

When the nerves of an invalid are scant of 
life the surgeons today can open the veins of 
some strong, healthy, vigorous nature and 
by transfusion of blood save life and restore 
health. In the same vital way when you take 
up the book of some large, wise, healthy soul 
who ranks among the immortals, and pos- 
sess yourself of it, making it your own by 
reading it until you see as he saw, feel what 
he felt, aspire as he aspired before you, you 
have accomplished that mental transfusion 
which is the highest phase of reading. 
When I get close to any young fellow, there- 
fore, I always feel like asking him in a whis- 
per, confidentially of course, " Can you 
read? " I do not mean merely taking a page 
of print and pronouncing the words, some 
[47 J 



C^e ptmg Jftan'g affairs 

of them right and some of them wrong. Al- 
most anything that walks on two feet and 
has hands can do that — the percentage of 
actual illiteracy is small in this country. But 
can you read and know what it is all about 
and how it bears on other things you have 
read? Can you see three things on a page 
separately with close discrimination and then 
see them in their mutual relations so that 
you can organize them? Can you organize 
other groups of three with them until you 
build up an intellectual system? Can you 
read in such a way that it makes you think 
and finally produce something with the look 
and taste of your own mind upon it? Can 
you read history, biography, poetry, fiction, 
science or religion until you know man's 
ways in the large, his gait and general direc- 
tion; so that you can strike the trail of hu- 
man progress anywhere and follow it? It is 
a great accomplishment to be able to read — 
one young fellow in a hundred perhaps takes 
pains to learn how to read, and he will be 
heard from. 

[48] 



fig 13006$ 



You will see young fellows who think they 
are reading — they are looking at print. 
They will sit and look at the print in some 
bulky, flabby Sunday paper for an hour, for 
three hours, perhaps, or at Munsey and the 
Black Cat; or at some poor, flashy novel 
which today is yelling at us from the news- 
stands, a month from now is being put aside 
because people are not asking for it, and a 
year from now is never mentioned because no 
one can remember that he ever read it. You 
see young fellows looking at that sort of 
print for hours on Sunday or through whole 
evenings. They merely want something to 
lean their feeble minds upon to save them 
from the effort of thinking. This is not 
reading — there is no transfusion of life- 
blood taking place. Why spend your time on 
inferior stuff when there is so much first-class 
material within your reach unread! 
I deplore the intemperate newspaper habit 
into which so many people fall. It leads 
to intellectual degeneracy. Ninety-nine one- 
hundredths of all that appears in the daily 
[49] 



C^e goimg jHatt'js affairs 

papers is the thinnest kind of gruel ; it is di- 
luted thought, diluted in a way to make the 
extreme homeopath who puts one little pill 
the size of a birdshot in a bucket of water, 
advising his patient to take a teaspoonful 
once in four hours, turn green with envy. 
Every man who lives in town must read the 
daily papers. I take two, one morning and 
one evening, but ten minutes a day is ample 
to possess myself of all they contain for me 
unless something of unusual interest has 
transpired. I take nine of the best weekly 
papers I know, covering a wide range from 
the strictly theological to a labor union 
Journal — fifteen minutes on an average is 
more than enough for each one. I take some 
monthly magazines, and they, too, can be 
rapidly read. The best reading is not to be 
found in the daily, which today is and to- 
morrow morning kindles the fire or is 
wrapped around the laundry bundle. Read 
books instead of spending so many hours on 
papers, if you would be strong, for the man 
jvho has something to say worth while will 
[50] 



f (0 1300fe$ 



not be satisfied until he has said it in a book 
that will last. 

I spoke last week on the value of personal 
association with the right sort of friends. I 
firmly believe that there is nothing on any 
printed page equal to the same word made 
flesh where this is accessible. But books open 
to us a wider range of association. All lands, 
all periods, all levels of society are open to 
us through literature. The house ■ I have 
lived in since I came to California thirteen 
years ago is a modest affair when you walk 
past and look at it from the outside. But 
kings and queens, poets and prophets, saints 
and seers, heroes and martyrs have been liv- 
ing with me there. Men and women who have 
been doing things, political things, commer- 
cial things, things scientific and things re- 
ligious, have given me the benefit of personal 
acquaintance with them there in my home. 
I have heard Tennyson sing at my own fire- 
side! I have heard Burke and John Bright, 
Webster and Wendell Phillips move the peo- 
ple by their matchless orations ! I have heard 

I 51 ] 



C^e ^outtg jHan's affair 

Macaulay describe the trial of Warren Hast- 
ings and Carlyle picture the tragedies of 
the French Revolution, and James Anthony 
Froude make Julius Caesar live before me as 
a fellow man. I have had Dickens and An- 
thony Trollope tell me stories which stretched 
out for weeks, and made me feel as if I had 
lived in Old England for years together. I 
have heard Bushnell and Beecher, Robertson 
and Phillips Brooks preach. 
I know all these people ever so much better 
than I know many of the people who live a 
block away on my own street. Speak the 
word " Lincoln," or " Bismarck," or " Glad- 
stone " ; speak the word " Shakespeare " or 
" Milton " ; speak the word " Darwin," or 
" Huxley," or " Agassiz" and they are not 
words, they are men! I never saw any one 
of them — most of them were dead before I 
was born — yet through the medium of books 
they have come to me and I have spent whole 
evenings in their companionship until a 
splendid share of the inspiration they hold 
has passed into my own mind and heart. 
[52] 



f f$ 15OO&0 



Enlarge your book shelves and you enlarge 
your house — you enlarge your life if you 
read books and make them your own by vital 
assimilation. You go back and live in all 
those great periods of history. You go and 
live in other lands which you have never vis- 
ited as yet. I have gone with Sven Hedin on 
his travels until the Desert of Gobi and the 
high table lands of Thibet are real to me — 
not as real as Lake Tahoe, Yosemite and 
Kings River Canyon, but they are on the 
map of my daily consciousness. I have gone 
far north with Nansen, Andre and other 
intrepid explorers until that country of per- 
petual snow lives around me. I have pene- 
trated the darkest parts of Africa with Liv- 
ingstone, Stanley and Stevens until I could 
hear the roar of the lions and see the huge 
amphibious beasts and watch the little pyg- 
mies living among the trees. Read what is 
worth while with patience, concentration, 
continuity and it builds your life out and up 
as no amount of hasty scanning of popular 
trash can ever do. 

[53] 



C^e ^oung jftan'g &ffait# 

But I wish to offer some concrete sugges- 
tions to young men about the use of books. 
First of all, read mainly the great books. 
When I walk through a large department 
store or along the street in front of the shop 
windows I always feel thankful that there are 
so many things in this world that I do 
not want. In the great libraries where the 
" stacks " hold hundreds of thousands of vol- 
umes, I always feel happy in thinking that 
there are carloads of books that I have no 
call whatever to read. You can only read a 
few of all the books there are at best, and for 
men generally, making exception of the 
groups of specialists, there are not so many 
truly great books but that you can read the 
most of them. 

Read some of the great histories — Gibbon's 
Rome," and then this new history of the 
Empire by Ferrero, which is just coming 
out. Read Macaulay's " England," and 
Green's " Short History of the English 
People." Read Bancroft's " History of the 
United States," and John Fiske's fascinating 
[54] 



f i$ 013OOfejS 



volumes on our early history. Read the 
other standard histories, giving you the 
movements of thought and life in many lands 
and times. 

Read some of the great biographies, Lock- 
hart's " Life of Sir Walter Scott," Boswell's 
" Life of Johnson " for a picture of London 
life in that fruitful period; John Morley's 
" Life of Gladstone," Nicolay and Hay's 
" Life of Lincoln," which is in reality a his- 
tory of the whole Civil War. Read the well- 
known lives of the men who have actually 
made history by their personal achievements. 
Read the best of the essayists, Carlyle and 
Emerson, Ruskin and Matthew Arnold. Read 
the great poets, not the little rhymesters 
whose stuff is only fit to be set to ragtime 
and sung at the Orpheum — read Shakespeare 
and Milton, Burns and Wordsworth, Tenny- 
son and Browning until their best poems are 
like familiar songs to you. I spent a number 
of years on Shakespeare, reading one play 
a week, marking it, committing certain lines 
to memory and then going over it all again 
[55] 



C^e ^oimg j&an'g affairs 

until the entire play had become familiar. 
Nothing ever did so much for my own style 
in writing and speaking as this. 
Read the nature books by master hands, not 
those by fakirs or apprentices — Thoreau 
and John Burroughs, John Muir and Henry 
Van Dyke. Read the great novelists — Dick- 
ens and Thackeray, George Eliot and An- 
thony Trollope — their stories never grow 
old. I have forty odd volumes of Anthony 
Trollope on my own shelves, and have read 
most of them three or four times — his easy, 
entertaining style and his realistic sketches 
of English life render his volumes rewarding. 
Read the best modern story writers, Kipling 
and Stevenson and Conan Doyle. I read 
" Treasure Island " every year and I cannot 
see but that I enjoy it as much as I did when 
it first came out. When you have formed the 
habit of living with the leading minds in any 
department of literature, cultivating their 
acquaintance until you are on good terms 
with them all, the work of the penny-a-liners 
does not appeal to you. 
[56] 



m -Boofeg 



In the second place read thoroughly on some 
one period of the world's life until you actu- 
ally live in it. Read the history of it until you 
have the requisite setting. Read biographies 
of the great men of that period. Read the 
poetry which came forth then as an expres- 
sion of its life. Read any great novels which 
dealt with the issues of that day. Read some 
good book of travel describing the situation, 
if you have never seen it yourself. By and 
by that section of the life of your race will 
have become a part of your own inner con- 
sciousness as much as the life of your own lo- 
cality and generation. In that way you gradu- 
ally possess yourself of those elemental and 
instinctive convictions, sentiments and aspira- 
tions which underlie all human progress. 
Some years ago I set out to familiarize my- 
self with that period in our own history 
which led up to the Civil War. I read a gen- 
eral history of it. I read the orations of Gar- 
rison and Phillips, Webster and Hayne, 
Calhoun and Sumner. I read all the lives of 
Lincoln there were, Nicolay and Hay, Hern- 
[57] ' 



C^e goirng pian f $ affairjs 

don, Holland, John T. Morse, Tarbell, and 
all the rest. I read Horace Greeley's "Ameri- 
can Conflict," Jefferson Davis 9 " History of 
the Confederacy," Pollard's " Lost Cause," 
"The History of the Civil War" by the 
Count of Paris. I read the sermons of 
Beecher and Theodore Parker during that 
period. I reread Harriet Beecher Stowe's 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," and Lowell's and Whit- 
tier's anti-slavery poems. I read the words 
of the popular songs and national airs which 
were then produced. A friend of mine had 
a complete file of the Boston Journal for the 
four years from 1861 to 1865 containing the 
letters of Charles Carlton Coffin as a field 
correspondent. I used to go up to his attic, 
and laying the big volumes on the floor, 
stretch out beside them and read for hours. 
I read Charles A. Dana's and Carl Schurz's 
letters for the same period. By and by that 
whole section of our history which was a liv- 
ing thing to the generation preceding my 
own became also a living thing to me. Once 
when I was asked on short notice to prepare 
[58] 



$f0 130060 



an address for an important occasion on 
" The Greatest Man of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, 55 it did not take me five minutes to de- 
cide on my man, and it was not difficult to 
prepare the address out of the material ready 
to hand as a result of my long and serious 
reading upon that period. 
Take any fertile section of the life of the 
race, the Reign of Queen Elizabeth in Eng- 
land, the period covered by the struggle of 
the Netherlands against Spain, the time of 
Napoleon in France, or the work of Bis- 
marck in Germany. Resolve that you will 
make it your own by working at it until 
those events, the leading men and women, the 
literature of that day, the bearing of the 
achievements upon the history of the world 
and the progress of the race, are all as vivid 
to you as something which happened last 
night. It will be worth ten years of desul- 
tory reading for the sake of amusement, or 
merely as a mode of innocently passing the 
time. 

In the third place, read as often as you can 
[ 59 I 



Clje potmg jftan'g £Mt$ 

with some definite purpose in view. There is 
in this community a certain club which has 
been in existence more than forty years. It 
is a very simple affair, made up of thirty odd 
members. They meet once in two weeks dur- 
ing nine months in the year, eat a plain din- 
ner together, for which two members of the 
club pay in turn. Then one man reads a 
paper on some topic of his own choosing and 
the members, called upon in turn, discuss it. 
The meetings of this Berkeley Club are al- 
ways full of interest and profit. There are 
in its membership a few college professors, 
two or three manufacturers, several lawyers, 
a physician or two, a journalist, two bank- 
ers, several men in wholesale business, two 
men high in the civil life of the state 
and the nation, three clergymen. It is an 
inspiration to know the men who compose 
it, and it is a serious responsibility to read 
a paper for their criticism and discussion. 
It was my good fortune last summer to 
spend some weeks in Russia. When I came 
away, while all the scenes there were fresh 
[60] 



f i$ 1300^ 



in my mind, I started in to read up on that 
country. I had considerable leisure, for I 
was on a leave of absence. I read books by 
the armful — a history of Peter the Great, a 
life of Catharine the Second, the history of 
Napoleon's campaign, for I had traversed 
the road of his retreat from Moscow ; various 
accounts of the political methods in Russia; 
criticisms of their art and music; treatises 
on their prison system in Europe and Si- 
beria. I read more of Tolstoi, of Gorki, of 
Sienkiewicz. It was all full of absorbing in- 
terest and I carefully took notes upon it! 
When it came my turn last week to read a 
paper before the club I described, I found it 
natural and easy to present the results of my 
special study and travel in the Russian Em- 
pire. 

It would be highly advantageous if there 
were groups of young men organized for 
similar ends in all our cities. The expense 
would be slight, the meetings of such clubs 
could be made full of interest and profit. It 
would be a great advance upon the Whist 
[61] 



C^e ^oung jftan'g &Uait& 

Clubs and other social organizations which 
*eat up time and money to so little purpose. 
It would train each man to read with a defi- 
nite purpose in view, and to acquire efficiency 
in saying something tersely, strongly and 
attractively. If each man read with the 
thought of bringing the results of his own 
independent and original investigation be- 
fore a company of his peers, it would stimu- 
late intellectual effort in the whole relation 
he sustains to the world of books. 
And finally, read books not so much to gain 
information — you can get that as you need 
it at any time, for it is all there, cut and 
dried, in the encyclopedia; read not to get 
ideas, but read mainly to gain intellectual 
and moral stimulus. Read in this mood and 
the great books will increasingly enable you 
to think out your own ideas. 
One soon tires of a book that does not make 
him feel now and then like getting up and 
walking the floor under the impulse of some 
larger vision of truth. He wants a book 
which will arouse and move him. If it fails 
[62] 



P0 13001$ 



utterly in that he soon lays it aside and seeks 
something else. 

Take four books which have appeared re- 
cently — Professor George H. Palmer's " Life 
of Alice Freeman Palmer, 59 the former presi- 
dent of Wellesley College; Professor Fran- 
cis G. Peabody's Yale Lectures on " Jesus 
Christ and the Christian Character " ; Pro- 
fessor Rauschenbusch's " Christianity and 
the Social Crisis " ; Robert Hunter's " Pov- 
erty." These are all recent books; any one 
of them would move you deeply ; any one of 
them would be found worthy of a place on 
your shelves. 

Let me speak also these two last words — you 
cannot afford in the face of the noble, in- 
spiring, stimulating books there are to read, 
to waste time on a weak book or a bad book. 
The decadent novels and problem plays — I 
know they deal with certain phases of life. 
So does my garbage barrel ! I have one in my 
back yard, but I do not care to eat out of 
it, and I do not want it in my study. Why 
nose around among rotten apples for a pos- 
[63] 



C^e poimg jftan'g Maix$ 

sible good bite when there are whole boxes 
of splendid red-cheeked fruit standing along- 
side! I do not want to read a book that 
leaves a bad taste in my mind any more than 
I want to eat a spoiled oyster which leaves 
a bad taste in my mouth. 
In your reading you will be stupid if you do 
not learn to read, to understand and tc en- 
joy the greatest book, not of one period, but 
of all the centuries. I say this not because it 
is the proper thing for a clergyman to say, 
but simply because it is true. I have read 
books by the thousand and there is no single 
volume which has yielded me so much in cul- 
tivating a good style, in stimulating thought, 
in shaping principle and in lifting the ideals 
high as the Holy Bible. 

If I were told that I were to be set down on 
an island with only one book for the rest of 
my life, the choice would be instantly made. 
Where is there any other single volume which 
has in it orations like those of Moses and 
Isaiah, songs like those of David, a drama 
like that of Job, such well told stories as 
[64] 



f i$ 1300110 



those of Joseph, Samson and Ruth, such 
shrewd moral sayings as are contained in 
the Book of Proverbs, such masterly letters 
as those of Paul and John! And there is 
nowhere on earth a volume containing such 
parables and pictures, such appeals to the 
will and such profound spiritual insights as 
we find in the recorded words of Him who 
spake as never man spake. 
If you find the Bible dull, you haven't 
learned to read it ! If you say you do not 
believe in it, you do not know what is there! 
Read it not because it will please God in 
some magical way — read it because the 
thoughts and feelings, the purposes and aspi- 
rations which it will put into your mind and 
heart will renew your life as by the transfu- 
sion of blood. It will make you wise unto 
moral completeness ; it will furnish you thor- 
oughly for every good work ; it will give you 
life abundant and eternal. 



[65] 



^ t^^m*. ,,,,,1-m i — umiiiiia ai -rii umi in mai -> ■irn J - -■ mil ir> *■-•<***-****** Awif^vt. -.^ 



f te jEonet 



[67] 



CHAPTER FOURTH 




HERE are four kinds of 
people in the world. There 
are the poor poor. They 
have no money, and they 
have nothing else in the 
way of intelligence, aspi- 
ration and affection to make life worth while. 
There are the rich poor — they have no 
money either to speak of but they have 
thoughts, loves, activities, appreciation for 
and joy in the sky, the hills, books, friends 
and God. Some of the happiest people I have 
ever known were rich poor people. There are 
the poor rich — they have money, lots of it, 
and nothing else. When you ask " How 
much are they worth," if you mean how 
much are the things they own worth, the an- 
swer might stretch out into six or seven fig- 
ures. But if you mean how much are they 
worth by virtue of the qualities of mind and 
[69] 



• - " - 



C^e poims jttan'g &f£aiv$ 

heart they can show, they do not inventory 
very large. Then there are the rich rich — 
they have money and they have aims, pur- 
poses, interests, which make life full, sweet 
and noble. It is well to look over the field at 
the start and decide in which class you pro- 
pose to live. 

Money is stored up life. If you work hard 
for a day and receive five dollars for it, that 
gold piece is so much of your own life ex- 
pressed in terms which all the world under- 
stands. You have put into it energy, intelli- 
gence, fidelity if you really earned the gold 
piece — it is that much of your life ! And you 
can make it minister to your life in a legiti- 
mate reaction. The gold piece will put food 
in your mouth to repair waste, it will put a 
hat on your head, or offer books to your 
mind, or travel to your wish for a broader 
outlook and experience. You cast your ef- 
fort on the waters and the gold piece brings 
it back to you in some other form which you 
prize. 

You can if you will make your gold piece 
[70] 



I^fe jHonet 



minister to other lives, education for the 
child, medical attendance for the sick, com- 
fort for the needy — it will mean life for each 
one. You can also relate yourself to the ac- 
tivities of men through your gold piece. If 
you spend it in a saloon, you start other men 
to making beer and whiskey and keeping 
grog shops. If you spend it in a gambling 
den, or brothel, you swell the demand for 
those forms of vice to the extent of your 
gold piece. If you spend it for groceries or 
clothing or books, you start men to pro- 
ducing those wholesome articles. You have 
power over the whole world of activity to the 
extent of your gold piece. Money, therefore, 
represents the deposit of life, a potential 
ministry to life, and the power to quicken 
and enlist the energies of other lives. 
You see then how vital is the relation between 
money and manhood. When I see piled up 
in the mint or in some large city bank hun- 
dreds and thousands of dollars in gold, I feel 
like taking off my hat. Here is that into 
which great numbers of men have put their 
[71] 



C^e faoung jftan'g Matt$ 

lives ! Here is that which would minister to 
the development and enlargement of life on 
a broad scale. Here is power to start into 
being activities hurtful or helpful to many 
lives. Never speak slightingly or scornfully 
of money — it is the mark of an ignoramus or 
a rascal. Money and manhood are bound up 
together for weal or for woe. 
There are four relationships which a young 
man sustains to money. First of all he re- 
lates himself to it by the money he earns — 
earn it honestly. I take it for granted that 
every young fellow who had strength enough 
of mind to come here tonight is either earn- 
ing his own money or intends to earn it. If 
by any chance some parasite has come in, 
who is content to have his father or other 
rich relative give him money, or who is 
merely waiting for that relative to die and 
leave him all he needs, it is hardly worth 
while for me to waste powder and shot on 
him. He does not come within the definition 
anyhow — I am speaking to young men, and 
he is neither young nor a man, no matter 
[ 72 ] 



i$ pionty 



when he was born or what kind of clothing 
he wears. 

It is the office of young manhood so to invest 
its strength as to bring forth an equivalent, 
so to serve that it earns what it has. Any 
young man who is not intent upon that 
effort as soon as he can get in shape for it, 
is denying his youth and his sex. In the town 
where I grew up a certain man who had 
sound health, a fine mind, an honest heart 
and a rich father, was bewailing the fact 
that he had not amounted to anything. 
" The best thing my father could have done 
for me," he said once, " would have been to 
have given me half a dollar and then kicked 
me into the street." His friend replied, 
" George, why didn't you take the half dol- 
lar and kick yourself into the street ? " 
Earning his way would have made a man 
of him but he saw it only after it was too 
late. 

Earn your own money then if you would 

make it a ministry to manhood. Never think 

of sitting around waiting to inherit it — it is 

[73] 



C^e poimg jttan'g affafrf 

the mark of a decadent. Never think of set- 
ting out to marry it. It may be well enough 
to marry a woman with a fortune thrown in 
if your own honest affection happens to steer 
you that way, but it is disgraceful to marry 
a fortune with a woman thrown in. A man 
who sells himself is as much lower than the 
girl on the street who sells herself as he is 
stronger than she. And the man who does 
not know the joy of taking the girl of his 
choice to the home which his own energies 
have provided, even though it is no more 
than a three-room cottage, and then of car- 
ing for her until he can give her all manner 
of advantages, misses half the joy of life. If 
he is compelled to have all these good things 
paid for by her rich papa, he is deprived of 
a large element of the sweetness which goes 
with married life. Earn your own happiness, 
if you would find it satisfying. 
Earn your own money, I say, by honest 
effort — beware of the short cuts. These 
" get rich quick " schemes rob about ninety- 
nine people out of a hundred of their money 
[74] 



f te pumzv 



— some promoter gets it. And the one man 
out of the hundred who makes money com- 
monly loses his own soul in the process of 
getting something for nothing. The man who 
whispers in your ear some rare opportunity 
in copper stock or in mining shares or in 
some invention which is to make everybody 
wealthy, ought to be in better business. You 
had better show him the door while you still 
have your money in your pocket and an hon- 
est purpose in your heart. 
Earn it — don't gamble for it, either at the 
race track or poker table, the bucket shop 
or through buying stocks on margin! You 
cannot afford to have any bastard dollars in 
your pocket — they are as disgraceful to you 
as illegitimate children. You ought to be 
able to feel that every dollar has come to 
you by the investment of energy, intelligence, 
fidelity. You must feel that you have given 
some valuable equivalent, which cannot be 
said of any dollar won through gambling. 
Jerry McAuley, who saw the seamy side of 
life in New York for a long period of years, 

[7«] 



€^e Pmmg jftan'g affair 

used to say — " I have seen drunkards become 
sober, hundreds of them^ thieves become hon- 
est and libertines become pure, but I could 
count all the gamblers I ever saw reform, on 
the fingers of one hand." Shun the whole 
dirty business of gambling as you would 
shun leprosy. You cannot afford to carry a 
piece of money in your pocket which is not 
clean. 

Earn it — do not steal it ! It ought not to be 
necessary to say that here in a Christian 
church nearly forty centuries after God said 
from the top of Mount Sinai — " Thou shalt 
not steal." It is necessary! My experience 
of twenty years in the ministry dealing with 
boys and young men, having them confide in 
me and appeal to me to help them out of ter- 
rible situations, has led me to know that 
when I stand before any congregation like 
this, there are young fellows present who are 
stealing from their employers. That young 
fellow is here to-night — several of him. The 
only salvation is for him to stop now, make 
restitution, and begin to walk so that he can 
[76] 



l$i$ pitmty 



look God and man in the face whenever his 
accounts are audited. 

A prominent minister in a large Eastern city- 
picked out twenty of the leading business 
men and addressed to them this question, 
" What is the greatest need of the business 
world today? " And when the replies came 
back every man of them, with not a single 
exception, said " Personal honesty." They 
knew something of the stealing which is 
going on. Let me appeal to you as one who 
has heard the voices of boys and young men 
tremble and break in their confessions, who 
has seen their faces ashy white over what 
they feared was in store for them, who has 
watched them with their minds intent on 
State's Prison, wondering if they would soon 
be there — let me appeal to you, " Never lose 
out of your own heart the horror of taking 
what is not yours ! " When you first begin 
to borrow money out of the drawer you in- 
tend to put it back — they all do — and per- 
haps for a time you do put it back. The first 
time you take it out of the drawer it costs 
[77] 



C^e poimg jftan's Maix$ 

you a struggle* The horror of stealing, 
however, is dimmed by that practice; by- 
and-by it fades out altogether; and under 
temptation you at last become actually and 
deliberately a thief. Earn your money hon- 
estly — there is no joy in any other sort of 
wealth. 

In the second place a young man relates him- 
self to money by what he spends — spend it 
conscientiously! Of all the fool ambitions 
which sometime have their hour with young 
men that of being known as " a good spend- 
er " is the emptiest. The young fellow who 
lets his money slip through his fingers easily, 
recklessly; the man who robs his employer, 
perhaps, in order to have plenty of automo- 
bile rides and road-house suppers, and then 
rides to prison to think it over for a term of 
years, is very commonly known about town 
as " a good spender." 

Men laugh at them, and even the girls have 
their own ideas on the subject. They know 
that the young fellow who sends them Ameri- 
can Beauties when he can scarcely afford 
[78] 



f te pitmty 



dandelions is simply indicating that he has 
more money than brains. When these very 
girls come to select husbands they prefer men 
who have more sense. There are lots of girls 
in this world who are not half as silly as cer- 
tain foolish men think they are — they quietly 
laugh in their sleeves at the " good spend- 
ers," even when the money is being spent on 
them. 

California has the undesirable reputation of 
being the most extravagant state in the 
Union. Even New York is less lavish in pro- 
portion to its means, for New York is old 
and rich, while we are just in our teens. 
High school boys and girls think they must 
entertain with the lavishness of well-seasoned 
society habitues. Boys and girls in grammar 
school have their ideas of pocket money 
which stagger the fathers and mothers 
brought up on a simple and more wholesome 
regime. You see people flashing along the 
street in their own automobiles and you won-' 
der how they can afford it — they cannot af- 
ford it ; they are simply exhibiting their fool- 
[79] 



C^e potmg jttan'g &ftaiv$ 

ishness at a rate which breaks all the records. 
Men sometimes blame it all on the women, 
and while they have the most to do with set- 
ting the pace of expenditure a man is a fool 
who allows himself to go down in financial 
and moral defeat because of a woman, even 
though the woman is his wife. We are reap- 
ing the fruits of this extravagance in those 
revelations of dishonesty made recently in 
various high schools and in the exposures of 
dishonesty high up among club men and 
young fellows in San Francisco. Extrava- 
gant spending has become a fruitful source 
of temptation which in turn has led to ter- 
rible dishonesty. 

" Why do you spend your money for that 
which is not bread? " Bread is the symbol of 
all that is wholesome. Bread satisfies, bread 
strengthens, bread enlarges. How much of 
a young fellow's money goes for that which 
does neither! He is not satisfied; he is not 
strengthened; he is not enlarged. It ought 
to be as much a matter of intelligence and 
conscience to part with your money wisely 
[80] 



fte jttone? 



and usefully as it was a matter of intelligence 
and conscience to earn it in the first place. 
When I was in college I was kept on very 
short rations — too short I thought then, and 
I think so still. The stern frugality, however, 
was not without its advantages. My room 
mate in the senior year inherited some twenty 
odd thousand dollars from his father's es- 
tate. He had a warm heart; he had not a 
single vicious taste or habit that I ever dis- 
covered. He used his money freely in a way 
that made me envy him. He wore good 
clothes, when my trousers bagged at the 
knees. He took in all the good shows that 
came to town, when I was at home reading a 
book and wishing that I was at the show. He 
showered gracious attentions which made 
him exceedingly popular with the young la- 
dies. We left college some twenty-five years 
ago. I was the best man at his wedding a few 
years later. Ten years ago he wrote to me 
a pitiful letter — it must have cost him a 
struggle to put it down in black and white 
for he had a large amount of personal pride. 
[81] 



€^e pouns jHan'S affair 

He asked me if I could send him fifty dollars 
for he was in a desperate situation financial- 
ly. He was not a bad fellow in any sense, 
but he had not learned how to spend his 
money. 

With the hundreds of children hungry, ill- 
clad, ignorant ; with the hundreds of men and 
women straining every nerve to live bui; go- 
ing down in defeat ; with every philanthropic 
institution in need of funds to make its work 
more widely effective, it becomes a sin and a 
shame to spend money, no matter how much 
you have, foolishly, recklessly, wantonly. 
Put into your spending your best brains and 
conscience. Money is the stored up life of 
the men and women who earned it; money is 
potential ministry that might be rendered to 
those lives which suff er for the lack of it ; 
money is power to quicken activities whole- 
some and helpful or vicious and hurtful. 
Therefore, put wisdom and conscience into 
the investment of every dollar you spend. 
In the third place the young man relates 
himself to money by what he saves— save 
[82] 



1$ te jftottey 



prudently! You will see young fellows hop- 
ping around in society, chirping to the girls 
like so many canaries, each one dressed up 
until he would inventory one hundred and 
twenty-five dollars, perhaps, as he stands 
forth in his swallowtail ready for the Friday 
Night Assembly, and yet many of them 
hardly know what a bank book looks like. 
If any one of them went to open an account 
in a savings bank he would have to be told 
three times where to sign his name. He is 
having a good time, but he is postponing 
marriage and a home. He is putting the suc- 
cess which might be his a long way off — 
so far that he may never overtake it in this 
life. He is missing the larger things in 
growth, in travel, in enrichment for himself 
and for those other lives which are bound 
up with his own, for the sake of the mere 
gratification which may be in no sense wicked 
but is unworthy of such a sacrifice. 
I make it a point to urge every young man 
to save his money by taking out life insur- 
ance early. I took out my first policy long 
[83] 



C^e poimg jman'$ Matv$ 

before I was married — I hoped to be some- 
time. It was a twenty-year-endowment and 
it matures this very year. And when I saw 
my way clear I took out another and another 
and another. It is not only a protection to 
the wife and children you have or may have, 
if you should be called away suddenly; it 
is a good way to save money regularly. It 
does not promise as large a return in the 
percentage of the dividend as that copper 
stock or mining share some plausible fellow 
is trying to sell you, but it is a great deal 
surer. When you take out a policy and pass 
the medical examination, you will begin to 
arrange to meet your premium year by year, 
and thus you will save steadily. Wise busi- 
ness men insure their homes and their stores 
against fire though they may go through life 
and never have a fire. Every man will die 
sometime and every man is growing older 
all the time. The face of an endowment 
policy will be very convenient when you are 
twenty or forty years older than you are 
now. 

[84] 



^fg pLomy 



It gives a young fellow confidence, self-re- 
spect, and strengthens his resolution to have 
accumulated something in a policy, a sav- 
ings bank, a house and lot or in some safe 
bonds which older and wiser men advise him 
to purchase. The financial effects of it are 
good and the moral effects better still. He 
begins to feel that he has a stake in life. He 
has been providing for his own interests and 
for those of the family he has or may have ; 
and there is a satisfaction in that which goes 
away ahead of the purchase of American 
Beauty roses, automobile rides, theater par- 
ties or wine suppers. If you would relate 
your own inner life to money in a wholesome 
way save prudently. 

And finally a young man relates himself to 
money by what he gives — give generously 
and systematically. Money is one of the 
most useful servants in the world, but it is 
a terrible and a degrading master. When 
money has mastered a man it puts a look in 
his eye that is like cold steel and it draws 
lines around his mouth which make it look 
[85] 



C^e gouwQ jHau'g affair 

like a trap. You may earn honestly, spend 
wisely and save prudently and still allow mon- 
ey to be your master instead of making it 
the servant of moral purpose, the messenger 
of good will. You must couple, therefore, 
with the other three habits formed early and 
steadfastly that of giving generously and 
systematically. 

I would urge every young man to begin to 
give a tenth of his income. The Jews did it 
and they were blessed temporally and spiritu- 
ally. They are still the bankers of the world 
and they formerly held the right of the line 
in moral insight and spiritual passion. The 
Mormons did it, and with all the moral de- 
facements of their system they have trans- 
formed arid Utah into a garden of prosper- 
ity beyond the wildest dreams of the founders 
of that community. " Honor the Lord with 
thy substance and with the first fruits of all 
thine increase, so shall thy barns be filled with 
plenty and thy presses shall burst out with 
new wine." " Bring all your tithes into the 
storehouse, that there may be meat in mine 
[86] 



PS pionty 



house, and prove me now herewith, saith the 
Lord of Hosts, and see if I will not open you 
the windows of heaven, and pour you out a 
blessing, that there shall not be room enough 
to receive it." Whenever a dollar comes to 
you set aside ten cents of it for charity and 
benevolence. Keep that fund sacredly, and 
then use the other ninety cents to spend or to 
save. You will find that you will be greatly 
blessed financially and morally in that sys- 
tematic method. 

I began to give that way twenty years ago 
when my own income was very small. I kept 
it up when it cost me a hard struggle. I 
have earned all the money I have ever had 
since I left my father's house. I have not 
stolen it, nor gambled for it, nor inherited it, 
nor married a dollar of it. I have been great- 
ly blessed in that systematic giving, and I 
commend it to all men, young and old. If 
you would keep money your servant and not 
allow it to master you, begin early, when you 
are not independently rich, thus forming a 

habit of systematic benevolence. You will 
[87] 



€^e poimg jttan'g affaitg 

come to rejoice in a higher and a better 
prosperity for the blessing of God upon 
fidelity and obedience is one that maketh rich 
and bringeth no sorrow therewith. 
In setting out to earn your own money hon- 
estly, to spend it wisely, to save some of it 
prudently, and to give a certain proportion 
of it generously, expect and accept a certain 
amount of struggle, hardship, sacrifice. 
What are your health and ambition for but 
to face and conquer all this! When any 
young man's main interest is in avoiding pain 
and seeking ease ; when he is always insisting 
on comfort and grasping for luxury, he does 
not deserve to be young. He is not young — 
he is already old and defeated. Accept the 
struggle and the sacrifice! Rejoice in it all, 
for that is what transforms pulp into reli- 
able fiber, boys into men ! 



[88] 



^te mcxtatiom 



[89] 



It was a wise man who wrote long ago — 
There is a time to weep and a time to laugh, 
A time to mourn and a time to dance; 
God has made everything beautiful in its time. 



[90] 



CHAPTER FIFTH 




OU see the rhythmic process 
he had in mind. It is the 
way of the world that there 
should be action and re- 
action, alternating cur- 
rents, each with its special 
quality. The man who sets out for a life of 
unbroken service and strenuousness breaks 
himself in the attempt. The bow must be 
unstrung occasionally if it is to retain its 
spring. Varying moods must alternate, each 
in the interest of the other. A man who weeps 
all the time, or laughs all the time, who slaves 
all the time or plays all the time, is out of 
line with the divine purpose, out of line with 
the constitution of things as they are. There 
is a time for seriousness and a time for gay- 
ety; a time for work and a time for play* 
" He has made everything beautiful in its 
time," — each mood and each interest gains 
[91] 



C^e ^omtg jttan'g Malt$ 

its beauty and its value by being held to its 
own place in the large scheme by a sound 
sense of proportion. 

I would suggest at the outset certain general 
principles which I believe every sensible man 
will accept. First of all our distinctions in 
the matter of amusements must be sound and 
real, not arbitrary and artificial. Tell the 
boy it is right to play croquet with wooden 
balls on green grass, but wrong to play 
billiards with ivory balls on green cloth, and 
he will insist on knowing the reason why. 
Tell him it is right to play dominoes using 
ivory blocks with spots on them, but that it 
is wrong to play whist using pieces of card- 
board with spots on them, he will insist on 
having the distinction brought out. There 
is no valid distinction forthcoming. Our dis- 
tinctions must be sound. They must hold 
water. 

In the second place the attitude must be a 
positive one not merely negative. It is not 
enough to steer clear of the more striking 
evils, merely making our recreations harm- 
[98] 



!£te iSectreatfons 



less. Playing tiddledywinks or crokinole or 
button is harmless, but you can scarcely call 
it recreation. Recreation must bring pleas- 
ure, real, live, human pleasure, with fire in 
its eye and red blood in its veins. " Our 
bodies are good, every function of them, and 
the pleasure which comes from an intelligent 
and conscientious use of them is God's own 
seal upon that right use." Our minds are 
good and that eager joy which comes to 
them in certain forms of recreation is a thing 
to thank high heaven for — high heaven or- 
dained it so. Our social natures which find 
expression in and become enlarged by whole- 
some recreation are meant to glorify the 
divine purpose and enjoy it forever. The 
relaxations of young people must be of such 
a form that they will be desirable and pleas- 
urable, not merely harmless. 
In the third place there must be a sense of 
proportion. Amusements at their best are 
only the flowers on the table and not the 
roast. You cannot live on the bouquet. The 
young fellow who spends all his spare time 
[93] 



C^e ^oung jman'js affair 

and spare cash on recreation, thinking of it 
when he ought to be thinking of some serious 
business is in a fair way to sleep in the hall 
bedroom a good while. You will not succeed 
because you can play billiards or bridge or 
dance better than any young fellow in town. 
The world is not waiting to give its money, 
its confidence or its gratitude to those chaps. 
It has its eagle eye on the more serious busi- 
ness of life and that is what yields the most 
satisfying return in every man's career. " A 
time to laugh and a time to dance," the wise 
man said — that time is not all the time nor 
at two o'clock in the morning when there is 
work to be done next day. In recreations 
even of the wholesome sort there must be sub- 
ordination of that which is incidental to that 
which is essential. 

In the fourth place every recreation ought 
to bring more than it takes. Recreation — 
re-creation ! What a vital thing it is ! It is 
meant to furnish the man a fuller supply of 
energy, enthusiasm, fitness for hard manly 
effort next day. That definition, I fear, 
[94] 



$i$ Mttnatiom 



would put many of the popular recreations 
out of the running. But it is a legitimate 
test. My recreations must be such that the 
body is recruited not weakened, the mind 
made more alert not blurred, the moral 
nature kept keen and alive not dulled nor 
blinded. The recreation must bring real live 
human pleasure and yet stand this test. Each 
amusement must bring more than it takes 
away. 

In the fifth place my pleasure cannot be 
gained at another's loss. The day has gone 
by everywhere when men and women can find 
pleasure in being cannibals. No matter how 
hungry they are they do not want to eat the 
flesh or drink the blood of their fellows. The 
whole idea is repulsive and there are better 
things to eat and drink. The day has gone 
by among really civilized people — there are 
people who wear collars and cuffs and eat 
with their forks, who are not genuinely civil- 
ized — when men and women can take pleas- 
ure in any amusement which means the loss 
of money or modesty, of aspiration or fitness 
[95] 



C^e ^otmg jttan'g Matx$ 

for the highest things, to a fellow-being. 
Money, modesty, aspiration, fitness for the 
highest things are elements in life, as vital 
as the flesh and blood of the body. 
The man who gambles and goes home happy 
because he has gotten some other man's 
money into his pocket and has sent him home 
poor, is a cannibal — he derives pleasure from 
eating his fellow. The men who gather in 
the theater and pay to see girls come out on 
the stage dressed — I mean undressed — in a 
way that means the destruction of that fine 
modesty which is a woman's crown, are can- 
nibals. For the gratification of their own 
desires they have eaten up the modesty of 
those girls, who have not strength enough 
or sense enough to resist the temptation to 
sell their womanly delicacy for so much a 
week. You would cut off your right hand and 
do your best with your left rather than have 
your wife or daughter, your sister or sweet- 
heart, expose herself in that way for pay. 
You are a cannibal if for your own gratifica- 
tion you help destroy that fine modesty in 
1 96 } 



I^te JKecteationg 



any woman. Carry the principle all the way 
through — right-minded, honest-hearted men 
and women will not find pleasure in the loss 
or degradation of another life. 
I do not know that I need say anything 
more. I have discussed these five principles 
with young men a great many times here 
and in my own home, at Stanford University, 
where I lectured on ethics for six years, and 
at the University of California where I am 
lecturing now every week to the students. I 
have never heard a young man who called 
himself a decent fellow undertake to combat 
any one of them. Our distinctions must be 
sound and real ; our attitude must be positive, 
insisting on recreations which are thoroughly 
enjoyable not merely harmless; a just and 
reasonable sense of proportion must be main- 
tained; each pleasure must bring more than 
it takes away, — it must re-create ; each 
pleasure must be gained without the loss of 
money or modesty, of aspiration or fitness 
for the highest things to others who are in- 
volved with us. If any boy or man will take 
[97] 



C^e poung jftan'g affairs 

these five principles, paste them in his hat 
and live under their beneficent sway> I have 
no further word to say to him in the way of 
rules or prohibitions. He will steer his craft 
clear of the rocks in this matter of recrea- 
tion and bring it at last into the desired 
haven. 

In all this series of addresses I am making 
my main plea to the men who have their 
heads up, intent on being and doing some- 
thing worth while. If you are bent on striv- 
ing for an honorable success at the bar, or 
in medicine, as an engineer or in business, as 
a teacher or preacher, you will have to put 
intelligence and conscience into your choice 
of recreations. Competition is keen — the 
world will not take " any old thing " these 
days. The strain is severe — when you be- 
gin to rise toward the top you will find that 
you have not an ounce of nervous force to 
waste. You cannot afford now to squander 
either money or time in view of the de- 
mands which will be made upon you as you 
advance. You will need it all, and your ex- 
[ 98 ] 



l$i$ Eecteatfong 



penditures must re-create impulses for effec- 
tive action. 

If this does not awaken any response in 
your heart, if you are satisfied to dawdle and 
lag behind, then it does not matter much 
with what particular crowd of weaklings you 
saunter. You can sit up half the night play- 
ing cards and inhaling cigarette smoke ; you 
can frequent theaters which help to pass the 
evening but do nothing more ; you can allow 
those amusements which weaken the body 
rather than recruit it, dull the mind rather 
than sharpen it, cloud the moral nature in 
place of making it more sympathetic and 
alive, to have their way with you. But if 
you mean to count one somewhere, you can- 
not afford to treat the question of recreation 
lightly. 

And in that serious purpose to do and to be 
something splendid, joy ought to have a 
large place. The first word in the Sermon 
on the Mount is " happy " — you find it 
translated in the ordinary version " blessed," 
but that is only a deep and abiding form of 
[99] 



C^e f oung jttau'g affair 

happiness. A long face and a clear conscience 
may go together — they are not inseparable. 
Where there is a clear conscience, the long 
face indicates something wrong with the liver 
or with the general scheme of things in that 
particular life. The corners of the mouth 
were meant to be turned up not down. Tears 
which now and then must come are meant to 
wash the eyes out, leaving them clear, with 
a more sympathetic insight and a finer radi- 
ance. It is not only consistent with a serious 
purpose but imperative for its full realiza- 
tion that wise and conscientious provision be 
made for recreation of the life forces through 
honest pleasure. 

I would make a strong plea for those forms 
of recreation which take us into the open air. 
The young man who has a sound pair of legs 
under him, has a simple, inexpensive, satis- 
fying source of recreation right at hand. A 
tramp through the hills, along some river, up 
the mountain side, when that is within reach, 
is always in order. No man ever walks to 
his grave, — he rides finally in a hearse, and 

1 100 r 



1$ i$ mcvtatiom 



he may be riding there swiftly in an automo- 
bile or behind a fast horse or by some other 
form of indulgence which he cannot afford. 
The more exciting and exhausting forms of 
pleasure sought after by city men often leave 
them with a distaste for the simpler modes 
of recreation. All the stars in the sky, all 
the wild flowers in the field, all the sweep and 
slope of hill and mountain, all the songs of 
the birds and the appeal of rock and tree 
become dull to them. Alas ! that they lose the 
capacity for those finer forms of pleasure* 
Distrust all those recreations which breed a 
distaste for healthy, simple, satisfying things 
— at last they will bite like a serpent and 
sting like an adder. 

Football, baseball, tennis, golf, boating, 
bicycling, tramping, fishing, how good they 
all are! And they are within the reach of 
such vast numbers of men ! It is one of the 
reproaches of our industrial system that they 
are not open to all. They leave no dark 
brown taste in the mouth. They rob no one 
of money or modesty or aspiration. They 
[101] 



C^e ^oimg jftan'g Mait$ 

bring more than they take away; they aid 
every man in feeling that it is forever fore- 
noon and the day is before him. 
I maintain that every Sunday ought to bring 
outdoor opportunity for all city men who 
spend the week in offices and stores. If a man 
were nothing but body, he might spend the 
whole of Sunday in that way. But a man has 
a mind needing the higher and vaster truths ; 
a man has a soul needing worship, fellowship 
and that form of aspiration and service which 
expresses and deepens his love for God and 
man. Every life, however, ought to plan for 
these outdoor periods which do so much to 
recreate the sense of power. 
I would appeal for those forms of recreation 
which involve brains and skill rather than 
mere chance. There is nothing inherently 
wrong in the fact that a game has an element 
of chance in it, — the old game of Authors 
had that. The element of chance entering in- 
to the good game of whist which can yield 
so much honest and wholesome pleasure does 
not in any wise vitiate it. It is a matter of 
[ 102 ] 



I^fg JSecteationg 



experience, however, that games of chance 
are most readily utilized for gambling. 
Against the whole wretched habit of gambling 

— men's sizes, women's sizes, children's sizes 

— I would utter the strongest protest I can 
frame, for it is the shame of modern life. 
Fashionable whist clubs which meet and play 
for prizes are in line with poker and faro and 
the race track, — the difference is one of 
degree not of principle. What can a mother, 
who habitually plays bridge for so much sil- 
ver made up into a card receiver, calling it a 

prize," say, when her son begins to play 
poker for so much silver coined into dollars, 
calling them " stakes." They are both in 
the same boat; the boy knows it and the 
mother knows it ; and they are floating down 
stream so far as unstained integrity goes, the 
boy nearer the rapids perhaps than the 
mother dreams. 

Think of a man being so reduced in brains, 
in heart, in social sympathy that he cannot 
go and play some game with his neighbor for 
the sheer pleasure of it ! Think of him as not 
[103] 



a 



€^e ^oimg pi&n f 8 Maitg 

feeling adequately entertained unless he can 
bag something of value to carry home as a 
prize. It is a wretched fashion for society 
to establish! It helps to undermine that sense 
of rugged honesty and to break down that 
finer self respect. When the revelations of 
dishonesty among the pupils of a High 
School bring consternation to a whole com- 
munity, the women who have been playing 
bridge for money at so much a point and 
ordinary whist for prizes, ought in all fair- 
ness to say — " We helped ! We are guilty 
with the boys, and now we will stop and try 
to develop brains enough to amuse ourselves 
without any suspicion or taint of gam- 
bling." 

The finer games, chess for example, which is 
the king of all games in that class, make the 
stronger appeal. You cannot play chess be- 
tween bites of gossip, — it requires attention. 
I could not tell you how many delightful 
hours on shipboard or on the train or dur- 
ing the leisure of some vacation I have en- 
joyed in matching my skill against that of 
[ 104 ] 



f f$ Mztnationz 



another across the chess board. Every young 
man ought to learn it for the joy of know- 
ing a game which takes his mind completely 
off of everything else and yields an inde- 
scribable pleasure. 

Billiards ought not to be handed over to the 
devil. The tables are often found in saloons 
and in the bars of the large hotels, but the 
game is both enjoyable and wholesome. It 
is a good thing that many families are pro- 
viding tables for their sons and daughters 
who play under right conditions with their 
friends. It is good that the Young Men's 
Christian Association in many eastern cities 
is putting billiard tables in the Association 
buildings to help reclaim that noble game 
from its evil associations. So all games 
where skill and brains are to the fore and 
chance is slight or entirely eliminated, offer 
the best form of sport. 

I would appeal for those forms of recreation 
which aid in developing a fine sense of chiv- 
alry. I was brought up to think that it was 
wrong to dance — I believe this was an er- 
[ 105 ] 



C^e foxing jftan'g affair 

roneous moral judgment. I know the abuses 
of it, late hours, promiscuous associations, 
drinking on the part of men at the adj oining 
bars, postures which are not conducive to re- 
finement. These are bad and only bad, but 
they can be eliminated and dancing used 
instead of abused. " There is a time to 
dance " the wise man said — that time is not 
two o'clock in the morning. The place is not 
where the conditions surrounding the dance 
are morally undesirable. But for right- 
minded young people to dance together with 
the mothers of the girls and boys present 
as chaperons, at reasonable hours, in their 
own homes, or at other places as unobjection- 
able, and with an eye to avoiding extrav- 
agance, offers a form of social recreation 
which has, I believe, a rightful place in a 
Christian civilization. 

Like other forms of recreation it ought to 
bring out the finer qualities, not the lower. 
The man who engages in it should by that 
very fact be made a more chivalrous, con- 
siderate and serviceable man. When the 
[106] 



PS mecreatfon* 



young fellow slips out between dances to 
drink whiskey or other intoxicants, and then 
comes back to blow the fumes of it in the 
faces of the young women; when he allows 
himself to surrender that much more to the 
animalism which whiskey rapidly induces, 
every decent woman ought to turn her back 
on him. When the young fellows here at 
a certain " Assembly " insisted on going out 
to smoke and inhale the cigarette fumes, com- 
ing back to blow their offensive breath in the 
faces of the young ladies, they needed rebuke. 
When the chaperons politely remonstrated 
the little chaps swelled up and said — " You 
cannot have your parties without us — we 
will do as we please." They thought they 
were gentlemen because they wore swallow- 
tails, but there are men digging in the streets 
at two dollars a day who have tenfold more 
courtesy and chivalry. The young ladies 
should have said " You cannot have your 
parties without us, and we stand for that 
higher level of good breeding, which you 
are not disposed to show." The girls who 
[107] 



€3)e gomtg jman'0 &ffaft# 

do not dance with such young fellows will 
live just as long and have just as good a 
time and reach the end without the sense of 
having missed anything worth while. All our 
social recreation ought to leave us with a 
more perfect courtesy, a finer chivalry and 
a purer unselfishness. 

I plead for those forms of recreation which 
send a man back to his work, whatever it may 
be, in better not in worse shape to make the 
quality of it fine, up to his limit. Spend 
your evenings in such a way that next day 
you will have in you the spirit of the morn- 
ing! Shape up your pleasures in such a 
way that they will not breed distaste for 
duty, but a keener zest and relish in the dis- 
charge of it. You know the German saying : 

"Die Morgenstunde 
Hat Gold im Munde." 

The morning hours have gold in their 
mouths. This is true in business, in the pro- 
fession, in the work of education, in humane 
service. But it is only true where the even- 
[ 108 ] 



^i$ mtnationz 



ing hours were spent in such a way that the 
morning brings with it the spirit of the morn- 
ing. 

I have no manner of doubt but that nine- 
tenths of our American young men would do 
well to lop off a full half of the money and 
time spent on recreation. For every young 
man in a twentieth century city who spends 
too little there are ten who spend too much. 
A young man started to climb Mount Blanc, 
carrying with him all manner of things, wine 
and delicacies, which he intended to enjoy 
when he reached the summit; a gay hat, and 
a blanket which he would then wrap around 
him to keep off the chill; a camera with an 
elaborate arrangement by which he could 
photograph himself at the various stages of 
the journey. The guide smiled and noticed 
that one by one these things were left behind, 
as the path grew steep. The young fellow 
laid aside his wine and sweetmeats ; then the 
gay hat and blanket were abandoned ; at last 
the heavy camera was also left behind, and 
when he reached the top he stood there a 
[ 109 ] 



C&e ^oimg jtftan's affair 

man equipped for climbing, with the impedi- 
menta left behind. If you intend to climb 
Mount Blanc or even one of the lesser peaks 
in your business, your profession, your trade, 
in the equipment of your home, in the enjoy- 
ment of travel, in winning the esteem and 
confidence of your fellowmen, you will need 
to throw off a lot of that rubbish you are 
carrying in the form of recreation. 
Whether you eat or drink, work or play, 
weep or laugh, do all things to the glory of 
God. And what is the glory of God? Wherein 
does it find expression ? He is above all things 
a Father, and His glory is the fulfilment of 
His beneficent purpose in the development of 
the lives of His children to their utmost. 
Nothing lies outside of that purpose. Noth- 
ing can be allowed to come in to hinder it. 
Carry your recreations up and decide upon 
them in the light of that sublime truth! 
Compel each one to open its heart and declare 
to you its real intent as it undertakes to 
fasten itself upon your life ! 
And if you insist that each recreation must 
[110] 



f te matatiom 



yield more than it takes in those physical, 
mental, social and moral values which count 
in the work of life; if you insist that each 
pleasure shall hold itself subordinate to your 
main purpose ; if you steadfastly require that 
no pleasure of yours shall be enjoyed at 
the cost of the finer values in those other 
lives involved, then indeed you will eat and 
drink, work and play to the glory of your 
Maker ! 



[mi 



f (0 Witt 



[113] 



CHAPTER SIXTH 

W mu 




T would be a great gain if 
the whole matter of love 
and marriage might be lift- 
ed to a higher level in the 
minds of young and old 
alike. The attachments of 
youth more than half the time are made a 
matter of thoughtless joke or of weak sen- 
timentality, and yet they lead oftentimes to 
what is vital beyond any other one interest 
you can name. Young people are making 
the most momentous decisions of their lives, 
as these bear upon happiness, prosperity, 
character, in the back parlor with the gas 
turned halfway down. They are making 
these decisions in a sweet swoon of sentiment 
— they had better have their eyes open, their 
wits about them, and view the whole question 
in broad daylight. You would not think of 
buying a house and lot, or a farm by moon- 



C^e Poimg jwan^ affair 

light, yet all the real estate you will ever 
own cuts no figure at all in its bearing upon 
life as compared with the wisdom or the 
unwisdom you show in the placing of your 
affections. 

Business men read documents over before they 
sign them. Young people had better read 
the marriage service over and think of what 
the several clauses in it imply. It is not wise 
to postpone its serious consideration until 
the last moment when you are breathlessly 
asking the minister where you are to come in 
with your responses. 

" Marriage is an honorable estate, instituted 
of God and commended by St. Paul; and 
therefore, is not by anyone to be entered into 
lightly or unadvisedly, but reverently, dis- 
creetly, soberly and in the fear of God." 
You will find that all the larger intentions 
of life fare better when they are solidly 
grounded in reason, reflection and religious 
purpose as well as clothed with lovely sen- 
timent. You are to take each other the ser- 
vice says, " for better " — that's easy — 
[116] 



W& We 



" for worse/ 5 because this too comes often- 
times and it is well to face such a possibility 
in advance ! " For richer " — any girl is 
cheerily ready to do that ; " for poorer " — 
she may be called upon to stand beside a man 
through years of financial struggle and de- 
feat ! " In sickness and in health " — you are 
to ask yourself as a man if you have it in 
you to show the same fine fidelity and tender- 
ness through possible years of expensive in- 
validism on the part of your wife as when 
she cheerily walked out beside you for a long 
tramp through the hills ! It may all come in 
the day's work and it is well to read the 
document over, weighing its various clauses 
before you sign it. 

" A good wife is from the Lord " — think of 
her in that high-minded serious way ! Accept 
her as the choicest gift high heaven can 
bestow upon your life. Undertake to dis- 
cover in her fitness for you and yours for her, 
as this comes to be revealed under the power 
of a strong and pure affection that divine 
purpose which shall find its glorious and 

I "71 



C^e powng j&an'g affafrg 

beautiful fulfilment through the unfolding 
years. 

Those noble unions into which reason^ con- 
science and religious purpose have entered, as 
well as the joy and passion of youth, have a 
thousandfold more promise in them than all 
the hasty, ill-considered attachments which 
may be only passing fancies at their best. 
You ought to be able to say without the least 
suspicion of artificiality touching the sense 
of reserve power, of unrevealed capacity 
in the young woman who is to share your 
life: 

" / love thee then 
Not for thy face, which might indeed provoke 
Invasion of strange cities, but 
Because Infinity upon thee broods 
And thou art full of meaning and of promise. 
Thou sayest what all the seas have yearned to 

say, 
Thou art what all the winds have uttered not. 
Thy voice is like sweet music from another 
world." 
You ought not to fall in love — rise to it! 
Let your mutual response, each to the other's 
[118] 



$(* Witt 



charm, mean the elevation of the whole tone, 
purpose and spirit of your lives under the 
power of a noble affection. Marriage is not 
a failure, although hundreds of thousands of 
people are failing in their attempt at it. It 
is the Matterhorn in the whole range of 
earthly privilege. Only the elect who can 
show those qualities of body, brain and soul 
necessary for the climb are privileged to 
reach the top. However high you may finally 
climb make up your mind to use your best 
strength not to add another to the list of 
marital failures. Carry your married joy far 
up the steep ascent! 

I suppose I have attended more weddings 
than any other person here, unless there hap- 
pens to be present some older clergyman 
whose period of service is still longer. I sup- 
pose the minister of a large parish like this 
comes to know the inside workings of more 
homes than any other man in the community 
unless it be the family physician with a large 
practice. I have seen a great many girls 
enter gaily into unions when it would have 
[119] 



C^e ^oung jftan'g affair 

been for their happiness rather to have had 
their hands chopped off, or their eyes put 
out instead. A girl would think a long time 
before she would consent to such a mutila- 
tion as that, and yet the mutilation of mind 
and soul which comes by marrying a man of 
unworthy character goes far beyond it. I 
have seen young fellows in a spirit of bravado 
or recklessness marry and then for years live 
so that their experiences were like walking 
through hell barefoot, bringing up at last 
in the melancholy debris of the divorce court. 
Because I see these things and am called upon 
to suffer with those who suffer, you will 
understand why I speak of this whole matter 
with a certain noble seriousness. 
Let me offer then out of a wide experience 
some very practical suggestions. First of 
all, earn your right to be married! Earn it 
physically! You have no right to bring the 
taint of vicious disease or the scars of vile 
debauchery to wed on equal terms with purity 
and honor. You will feel like a whelp if you 
do — whether she knows or the world knows 
[ 120 ] 



$f* mtt 



or not, you will know. When you hear some 
plausible scoundrelly argument put forward 
for impurity down here at the High School 
or on the boat, or in some hour of reckless 
dissipation, think how you would feel if you 
heard such a sentiment from the lips of your 
sister or your sweetheart. Scorn it all, as 
you would have her scorn it ! 
Earn your right to be married morally. 
Blessed be God for the faith and hope and 
love of good women, but you have no right 
to impose upon that gracious disposition. If 
you find yourself in the grip of some appe- 
tite, liquor, gambling or what not, have the 
common decency to fight your own battle 
through and win it first, that you may offer 
her a man and not a victim. 
Earn your right to be married financially. 
A girl who is worth marrying is not a fool. 
She does not expect you to be as prosperous 
at the beginning of your life as her father 
is at the close of his. She is willing, if there 
is anything of the woman in her, to share in 
the struggle and enjoy the success which will 
[121] 



Clje poung jftan's Maiv$ 

come by-and-by, all the more because she 
helped bring it about. 

There are girls who lack this readiness — 
" charlotte russe girls," someone called them, 
" all whipped cream and little sponge cakes 
and high-priced flavoring extracts, but nei- 
ther satisfying nor nourishing." The girl of 
sense is not like that — she does not want to 
begin her housekeeping on the same scale as 
that upon which her mother leaves oif . Take 
for granted her readiness to make sacrifices 
with you joyously, because of her love for 
you. But even so know that it is an unmanly 
thing to take a girl out of her father's home 
and away from the opportunity of making 
any other union unless you have a reasonable 
prospect of being able to provide for her 
comfort. 

There are a lot of old saws which ought to 
be retired. " Two people can live on less than 
one " — it cannot be done. You might as 
well say that two and two make five. You 
will find that the multiplication table is still 
in force however much you and your bride 
[ 122 ] 



W$ &Ht 



may be in love with each other. A man's hat 
costs three dollars or three dollars and a half 
— even a Dunlap or a Stetson only five. Cast 
your eye on one of those lovely creations 
which obstruct the view and try to think 
what a sealed bid on such a structure as that 
would probably reveal. Any wife doubles a 
man's expenses, and if she is a good wife she 
more than doubles his happiness — so it all 
comes out right in the trial balance. 
It is the part of good sense to think of all 
this even before you find yourself engaged. 
It is well to think of it when you are tempted 
to spend all your spare cash on unnecessary 
indulgences. A substantial account in the 
savings bank or a life insurance policy on 
which you have been paying for a number 
of years will be a very pleasant thought to 
you when you are on your way to the jewel- 
er's to buy the wedding ring. Earn your 
right to be married physically, morally, 
financially. 

In the second place, be married, unless there 

is some hard fact standing in the way which 

[ 123 ] 



C^e ^oimg jEan'g Mait$ 

makes it impossible. You cannot do anything 
better for the human race, taking it by and 
large, than to build one more normal and 
happy home in the world. What other insti- 
tution is there for which you can become 
individually responsible, that compares with 
it? Out of such homes, as from no other 
source, issue those influences and activities 
which inspire industry with finer principles 
and invest social life with a purer spirit, 
ennoble the state and strengthen the church. 
What better thing anywhere on God's green 
earth is there than such a home ? Your pleas- 
ure, your convenience, your career will not 
weigh for a moment over against such an 
asset to society as that real home which you 
might go and build. 

The men who refuse to marry, making excep- 
tions here and there for those individuals 
who because of ill-health or peculiar family 
circumstances or other valid reasons, find it 
impossible, are selfish men. Each one might 
be making some good woman happy, but he 
prefers to spend his all on himself. They de- 
[ 124 1 



9b &ift 



serve the feeling which all rightly constituted 
men and women have for them. We may j oke 
about them as "jolly old bachelors," but 
the world withholds from them its genuine 
regard. It is an abnormal, cowardly way 
to live for the man who chooses it voluntarily, 
and unless there is some insuperable obstacle 
which makes marriage impossible, you should 
not be willing to march under that sorry 
flag. 

In the third place, marry the right woman. 
While I urge every young man to be married 
and have a home, I do not mean that he 
should leap in at the slightest provocation. 
As Senator Beveridge puts it, " The fact 
that it is advantageous for a man to learn to 
swim does not mean that he should jump into 
the first stream he comes to with all his 
clothes on." It is not well to propose to a 
girl " before you have had time to notice 
whether her front hair and back hair match. 55 
I use the expression symbolically as well as 
literally, for you may find that she has two 
kinds of adornment in her manners, her mind 
[125] 



Clje poimg jtftau'g &Uait$ 

and her disposition. It is well to know 
whether the young lady who receives you in 
the evening so delightfully when you call is 
the same young lady who responds next morn- 
ing to her mother's summons to assist in pre- 
paring the family breakfast. It is well to take 
time to consider all these things in advance 
for when you are once married you will be 
married a good while. 

You think it is wonderful that some girl is 
interested in you because you have shown an 
interest in her; that when you are with her 
she makes you feel that you are almost a 
god. Girls have been doing that ever since 
Eve walked as a bride among the trees of the 
Garden. You cannot throw a stone in a 
crowded city without hitting twenty girls 
who would do the same thing if you should 
show an interest in any one of them. And it 
is just as well to beware of the girl who is 
too ready with her response — if she is a 
girl worth having she wants to look you over 
to see if your front hair matches your back 
hair. 

[126] 



$f* mit 



Beware of the girl who is perfectly willing to 
have you spend four or five evenings a week 
in her company. In the days when knight- 
hood was in flower, it was said that no man's 
armor was ever fitted to him aright until the 
hand of affection had buckled it on. And 
when the woman who loved a brave man sent 
him forth encased in steel, her mark of affec- 
tion upon his cheek, she expected him to do 
and to dare, to take a man's full part in the 
life of the world. A woman who has not 
brains enough to have a pride in and a con- 
cern for a man's achievements in the field of 
serious manly effort, who prefers to have him 
always dancing attendance upon her pleas- 
ure, is of no help to a man possessed of 
genuine aspiration. 

Marry the right girl — hasty, foolish, ill- 
advised marriages are responsible for nine- 
tenths of the melancholy wreckage in the 
divorce courts. There is a law pending be- 
fore our Legislature at this time to provide 
for more publicity and more deliberation in 
the act of marriage. As it is now a young 
[ 127 ] 



%ty poun% jHatt'g Matt$ 

fellow can get a marriage license in about 
fifteen minutes whenever the fit is on him, and 
at once stand up before a minister for four 
minutes more, and then put in a good many 
years cursing himself for being a fool, or 
causing some woman to curse the day she first 
saw him. Take your time, take your time, 
even though your emotions are fairly sweep- 
ing you off your feet ! It will be better to sit 
down now and consider the whole matter care- 
fully in advance. Emotions and all, those 
unions which are based on acquaintance, 
knowledge, ascertained congeniality and fit- 
ness are the ones which best stand the wear 
and tear and finally yield the most. 
I know exactly how you feel when you meet 
one of those girls who is " just a dream " — I 
have felt that way myself. She has a far- 
away look in her eyes ; she quotes Shelley and 
Browning; she has a plaintive, vox humana 
stop in her voice, which she pulls out when 
she speaks of " kismet " and fate, or hints at 
tragedies in her own emotional history. She 
is a dream of a girl, but dreams are poor 
I 12 8 ] 



PS Witt 



things to build on — they are liable to end in 
nightmares. Something more substantial and 
ascertainable would be preferable, and you 
are wise if you take time to give the woman 
of your choice the fullest consideration. 
Here are some principles of selection which 
you will find useful. Before marriage the 
face, the figure, the manner seem to count for 
everything. They have their value all the way 
along, but after marriage mind, heart, soul, 
are rated higher, and you will think so too 
before you have celebrated your first wedding 
anniversary. Marry a woman first of all of 
sterling moral character — a woman who does 
not lie, nor steal, nor act meanly; a woman 
capable of self-restraint and self-sacrifice — 
she will need these qualities if she marries you 
or me or any man ; a woman kindly and gen- 
erous in her prevailing moods and temper; 
a woman with a great power of sympathy, 
which is the feminine grace that well-nigh 
outweighs all the rest. Seek for these fine 
qualities as the basis of character, and then 
the more beauty of person and social win- 
[ 129 J 



C^e ^oung jmau'g affair 

someness the better! The woman within the 
woman is the one you will live with; she is 
the one to whom you will be compelled to go 
for the strength and joy that married life 
should bring. 

I would not speak slightingly of outward 
attractions — " Beauty is only skin deep," 
Lorimer said, " but that's deep enough for all 
practical purposes." The woman you can 
look at with some degree of comfort is to be 
preferred to the opposite type, other things 
being equal. But other considerations weigh ; 
no matter how pretty she is, you must ask: 
Has she any mind? Does she read anything 
besides the novels of the day? Can she think, 
and when she thinks does she produce any- 
thing? Has she any serious purpose in life? 
Has she any ideals, fine enough, high enough, 
inclusive enough, to hang up in your sky and 
hers; and does she take them seriously? Has 
she the power of making friends among 
women as well as men, for the woman who 
shines only when with men and not with her 
own sex belongs in the same sorry category 
[ 130] 



^(0 Wilt 



with " The Ladies' Man," Does she pray ? 
She will need that fine form of aid for herself 
and for you, in your times of temptation, 
defeat, sorrow, and for those children which 
may be yours. These habits of mind and soul 
are the ones which ought to tip the scales of 
your choice ! Marry the right woman ! 
And finally when you are married, stay mar- 
ried. In California last year in a certain 
county there was one divorce to every ten 
marriages, and in another county one divorce 
to every four marriages. The gruesome rec- 
ords of the divorce courts and the array of 
irregular attachments and scandals which 
lead up to them, as revealed by the daily 
press, are appalling. 

We might as well stand up man-fashion and 
say that four-fifths of it all is our fault. 
There are faults on the other side. There are 
women I would not live with even though I 
had been so unfortunate as to have married 
one of them. I would not live with an im- 
moral woman ; I would not live with a woman 
who was an habitual drunkard. But short of 
[131] 



€^e poirng jttau'g Mattg 

some form of outrageous wrongdoing I am 
just old-fashioned enough to believe that 
nothing should cause a man to leave the wife 
whom he has sworn to protect or to take such 
an attitude as compels her to leave him, so 
long as they both shall live. 
The man is the aggressor. He seeks the girl 
out, — she does not go to him and suggest 
marriage. He takes her out of her father's 
home, away from the other men who might 
have married her. He stands up before God 
and man and in the most solemn way prom- 
ises to do everything that a man can do, to 
love, honor and protect her so long as they 
both shall live. You may hear some young 
fellow whine about his affairs, after he has 
been married a few years and plead as an ex- 
cuse for his growing interest in some affinity 
— " I was not happy." Suppose he was not ! 
He may not be happy when he goes down to 
pay his taxes, or when he finds he has signed 
some contract which turns out to be for his 
loss, or when he must fulfil any one of a hun- 
dred hard duties which belong to manly in- 
[ 132 ] 



m We 



tegrity! It is a question of honor and of 
keeping one's word> not of feeling tickled 
every moment of the time! If the woman 
wants to live with him and is not a bad 
woman, he is pledged to strive with all his 
might to live with her and to do his best to 
make her happy. 

All this wretched talk about " affinities " in 
justification of marital infidelity, all these 
problem plays and decadent stories dealing 
with those abnormal attachments which lead 
to immorality, what a mess of rotten apples 
it all makes ! We need the rigor and the vigor 
of some northwest wind to clear the air ! 
This very week this case came into my own 
study. A man married a lovely girl here three 
years ago. There are now two little children. 
The woman trusted him and loved him and 
thought he was one of the best of men. 
Within the last six months he has been neg- 
lecting her, — he " was not happy," he said ; 
he had found an " affinity " elsewhere. Now 
he has left her altogether, and she must 
return to her father's house to get bread for 
[ 133] 



C^e ^outrg jHan'g Maiv$ 

herself and her children. I suppose we did 
right in abolishing the old whipping post, 
where men for certain offenses were tied up 
and given forty lashes across their bare 
backs, but with such a man as that to deal 
with I wish we had some proper modern de- 
vice to show the resentment of decent society 
against such a crime. 

A well-appointed marriage is an inspiration) 
and a joy forever, but no true man will allow 
himself to go down in defeat morally, finan- 
cially or otherwise because he made a mis- 
taken choice. His own manhood, as well as 
the stability of those domestic relations which 
lie at the basis of all moral advance in society 
is at stake. Not in more stringent divorce 
laws; not in the rivetting of stronger rules 
upon human conduct, but in the development 
of a finer chivalry on the part of men toward 
women, and of a truer sympathy on the part 
of women toward men are we to find our 
domestic salvation. 

Turn to the Lord Christ ! How He guarded 

and protected and upheld the woman! She 

[ 134] 



$$ Witt 



might be an erring woman; she might be a 
woman lacking in j udgment ; she might be a 
woman weak and frail in her whole make-up, 
— no matter, the Son of Man, the typical 
Man would shield and sustain her by His 
finer strength! In a fuller measure of that 
Christian chivalry which bears all things, 
hopes all things, endures all things, that it 
may make full proof of its manly devotion, 
we shall build around the home its best de- 
fense. 



[135] 



ps ctymQ 



1 1S ? I 



CHAPTER SEVENTH 



PS €t)uvti) 




OU have allowed me to speak 
to you on these evenings we 
have been spending to- 
gether touching the vari- 
ous aspects of the young 
man's life. We have been 
thinking of his main purpose and of his 
friends, of his books and of his recreations, 
of the money he controls and of the home he 
hopes to build! We come now to that which, 
in a way, should underlie all the rest, lifting 
them into a higher meaning and clothing 
them with a finer strength. The young man 
needs religion, just as surely as he needs 
money and friends, books and a home — and 
I know of no better place to gain it and 
maintain it than in some branch of the Church 
of Jesus Christ. 

Just ahead of this splendid young fellow, 

full-blooded and resolute, stands a tempta- 

[ 139 ] 



C^e prnig jftau'g affair 

tion awaiting him, — it will test him as the 
storm tests a ship. Will he conquer it or will 
it have its way with him? 
Just ahead of him stands a hard duty, a 
chance to bear his part man-fashion in the 
everlasting battle which is on between the 
higher and the lower! Will he shirk or will 
he shoulder arms and go to the front, ready 
to take his own full share in the struggle ? 
Just ahead of him stands one of those awful 
sorrows, which come oftentimes to old and 
young alike ! Will he meet it and not flinch, 
holding his course as a true man and impart- 
ing strength to those around him, or will he 
prove a weakling? 

These are questions which must be answered, 
yes or no, not with the lips, but by the life. 
And these are questions to which the answers 
are worked out not in the chemistry class or 
in the engineering building where you study, 
not in the office or the store where you work, 
not in the club house or other resort where 
you play, so much as in that place where 
above all else men are brought face to face 
[140] 



li^te C^urc^ 



with God, and taught to feel a sense of fel- 
lowship with Him, who is the ultimate source 
of moral strength. 

" On this rock I will build my church." The 
words fell from the lips of One who was still 
young, only thirty-two. They indicate the 
purpose which was fundamental to His life 
work. He wrote no books. He painted no 
pictures. He amassed no wealth. He gath- 
ered together some men and women who be- 
lieved in Him and shared His spirit, and 
then He built them into a church. It was the 
main , thing He came to do — He committed 
the truths He had taught and the whole 
movement He had started into the keeping 
of that little church. It is well for us to 
recall the divine initiative in the organization 
of the church and the high estimate placed 
upon it by One who knew and spake to our 
needs as never man spake. 
" On this rock I will build " — He spoke these 
words to a group of young men with their 
lives ahead of them. When one of the group 
spoke out his own faith, love and loyalty to 

[ i4i ] 



C^e pnwa pLmx'z affair 

the Master, Christ said : " Blessed art thou — 
on this I will build ! " He saw around Him 
many who felt an admiration for what He was 
doing. They said, " He is equal to John the 
Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or any one 
of the prophets." All this had a certain value 
but not the highest. Close beside Him were 
a few young men who trusted Him unreserv- 
edly and openly confessed Him as the Lord 
and Savior of men. They were out and out 
about it, and they became the ground of His 
hope. " On this rock I will build," He said, 
" and the forces of evil shall not prevail 
against it." 

He entrusted to that group of young men, 
who were clear-cut in their loyalty to Him, 
a tremendous responsibility and a splendid 
privilege along the line of moral usefulness. 
" I will give you the keys," He said — " I will 
make you competent to open the door for 
your fellow-men into a larger and nobler way 
of life." It is nothing official or perfunctory 
which Christ is describing here. The petty 
ecclesiasticism which undertakes to wrap all 
[ 142 ] 



W& €l*mti) 



these fine realities up in a surplice misses the 
meaning of the whole passage. He was pic- 
turing that strong and vital service, which 
young men anywhere, when once they become 
allied with Him, could render their associates. 
Your influence for good or for evil as you 
go out brim full of that unwearying energy 
which belongs to youth, can become so potent 
that what you loose on earth will be loosed 
in heaven, and what you bind on earth will be 
bound in heaven ! You can by your own moral 
influence help to fasten men in their sins or 
help to free them, in a way that will send its 
results on into the unseen world. 
What a glorious thing to stand up young, 
strong, clean, and have the Master of men 
speak to you like that! What a splendid 
privilege to have the One who has set all the 
leading nations of the world dating their his- 
tory, their contracts, their correspondence 
from the date of His birth, 1909 years ago, 
address you in those terms! How magnifi- 
cent to be one of the group to whom He com- 
mits such a trust ! " On this I will build ! " 
[ 143 ] 



C^e ^otmg jftau'g Mait$ 

" I will give you the keys " — that we may 
throw the doors open wide for our fellows 
into the joy and splendor of life. We may go 
forth when once the energy of His purpose 
has become potent in our hearts, binding and 
loosing in the moral influence we can exert. 
And that company of people, young and old, 
men and women, in this land and in all lands, 
we call the Church of Christ Jesus. 
What a noble privilege for a young man to 
build a portion of his life into an institution 
like that! Take for example this church 
which we all know — there are any number of 
other churches in the land which would serve 
equally well to illustrate my point, but here 
the facts are right at hand. It has the ear 
of the community, — what it says counts. It 
is known far and wide for its noble music — 
people come for miles to listen and go away 
blessed. It has standing all over this land as 
a center of intelligent, systematic religious 
instruction, through its graded Sunday 
School and its employment of a trained man 
to give his whole time to superintending that 
[ 144] 



P0 C^utc^ 



work. It is a beehive from which workers go 
out into the charitable and philanthropic 
work of the community, — you cannot name 
a charity in this city, except those directly 
under the care of the Roman Catholic Church, 
where the members of this congregation are 
not serving. It is a center of joyous fellow- 
ship — in all the fifty years of its history it 
has never had a quarrel and the friendships 
formed here among its members are among 
the sweetest experiences of their lives. It has 
a political influence, and when the five hun- 
dred men who are members of this congrega- 
tion set their influence strongly in support 
of some measure of civic righteousness or bet- 
terment, the city feels it. It is a powerful 
institution, as everyone knows, set down here 
at the center of this community of more than 
a quarter of a million of people. 
And how did it all come about? This church 
did not drop down out of the skies in the 
night. Some wholesale house in the East did 
not load it on a freight train and ship it out 
here. It came because a company of young 
[ 145 ] 



C^e potmg jftan'S affair 

men and young women, older men and older 
women have for fifty years been putting in 
their time and their strength, their money 
and their service, their devotion and their 
love to make the First Congregational Church 
of Oakland one of the factors which would 
count for the higher life of the city, the state 
and the nation. 

Indeed, its influence has gone out into all the 
earth, its money and its members to the ends 
of the world. We have at this hour those who 
were once and those who are now upon its roll 
of membership, working in Alaska, in Japan, 
in China, in India and in all the islands of the 
Sea, carrying on the everlasting battle be- 
tween the higher and the lower, helping to 
put the crown of victory where it belongs. 
How glorious to be one of that group around 
the Master of men, the Great Head of the 
Church, and to build one's life into an institu- 
tion whose influence is so wholesome and far- 
reaching ! 

I have knocked around a good deal in the 

forty-five years I have been privileged to live. 

[146] 



$t$ €\)uttt) 



I have attended various institutions of learn- 
ing and I have a drawer full of diplomas at 
home. I have received some expressions of 
the esteem and confidence of my fellowmen, 
which are inexpressibly precious to me. But 
the highest honor I have ever received or 
ever can receive is the privilege of being 
known as a Christian. The name of my 
Master Christ — it is the name above every 
name, and I am permitted to wear it in being 
known as a " Christian. 5 ' When some man 
stands beside the open casket to speak a few 
words of appreciation for me as I have 
spoken them for so many hundreds of peo- 
ple in my ministry, if that man can say " He 
was a Christian/ 5 I ask nothing better. 
And being a Christian, a servant and follower 
of Jesus Christ, I want the fact to be known, 
I want to be enrolled somewhere as a member 
of some branch of the church of Christ. I 
would be ashamed to slink off in the dark and 
try to be a Christian all by myself, never 
confessing my allegiance openly by member- 
ship in the church He came to build. 
[147] 



€Ije ^oimg jHatr'g Mait$ 

How strange and abnormal such an attitude 
would be ! I have listened reverently to the 
service of the Mass in Catholic St. Peters at 
Rome, I have enjoyed the superb music of 
the men's chorus in the Cathedral of the As- 
sumption in the Kremlin at Moscow, and I 
have heard a choir of Indian boys sing Greg- 
orian chants in a Russian church on the west 
coast of Alaska! I have witnessed the mid- 
night service on Good Friday at the Cathe- 
dral of the Greek Church in Athens, and I 
have heard the call to prayer from the min- 
aret and have seen devout Moslems prostrate 
in worship in the Mosque of St. Sophia in 
Constantinople. I have studied the stolid 
faces of the Chinese in their Joss House yon- 
der and I have seen the tear-stained faces of 
devout Jews who were pouring out their 
hearts in prayer at the Jewish Wailing 
Place in Jerusalem. And although in every 
case the mode of worship and the language 
were entirely unlike my own, I felt a sense 
of kinship with them all in their yearning 
for the sense of fellowship with the Divine. 
[ 148 ] 



fig €l)mify 



How incomplete and abnormal I should feel 
if I had no part whatever in that hunger of 
the soulj or if I had nowhere declared and 
recorded my attachment to the great Head 
of my church! 

Let me say then these two things to the young 
men — first, you need the church. It is the 
inner principle of each man's life which 
counts much more than the passing phases 
of his environment. You cannot raise grapes 
from thorns, nor figs from thistles, even 
though you plant them in black loam ten 
feet deep, well-watered, and with a southern 
exposure. It cannot be done — the inner prin- 
ciple of the thorns and the thistles is wrong ; 
it cannot be made to issue in a fruitage of 
grapes and figs. It is the good tree which 
brings forth good fruit on all the fields of 
human effort. It is the heart made right 
through the gospel which the church 
preaches, it is the heart made right by Him 
who is the great head of the church, which 
makes the whole life right. 
Here is the Sermon on the Mount, the 
[ 149 ] 



C^e goung jHan'g affairs 

Magna Charta of spiritual privilege, as Ly- 
man Abbott puts it, in a nutshell. The secret 
of happiness is character — Blessed, that is 
to say happy, are those who are gentle and 
merciful, sympathetic and aspiring, peaceable 
and pure. The secret of character is a 
certain spirit within — Seek first the King- 
dom of God which is within you; make the 
tree good and the fruit will be good. This 
right spirit within comes by knowing the 
Father — Pray, and when you pray say " Fa- 
ther in heaven, thy kingdom come; thy will 
be done here as it is done there. Lead us 
and deliver us from evil.' 5 The secret of hap- 
piness is character ; the secret of character is 
a certain spirit within and that spirit is 
gained by knowing the Father whom Jesus 
Christ revealed. There you have it all in a 
nutshell. 

Your surroundings with all the forces they 
hold have a certain influence, but it is second- 
ary. You have all seen this — two boats sail- 
ing in exactly opposite directions with the 
same wind. The environment was the same 
[150] 



f (0 €$uvty 



for both, but one was going this way and the 
other that. It all depends on the set of the 
sails and the purpose of the man at the helm. 
Let the Master of all the ships which sail the 
high seas of moral effort show you how to 
rig your boat and set your sails and then 
under His direction hold the rudder true 
and you will sail strongly and securely in the 
right direction, no matter what your environ- 
ment may be ! 

" One ship turns east, and another west 
With the self-same winds that blow; 
'Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales, 
Which tell us the way to go. 

" Like the winds of the sea are the waves of fate, 
As we voyage along through life; 
'Tis the set of the soul which decides the goal, 
And not the calm or the strife" 

I have lived long enough to know the devil 
when I see him. I have seen him going about 
seeking what he might devour here in this 
town as he is doing in all towns — and finding 
it. He has taken many a young fellow from 
the High School yonder and thrown him 
.[ 151 ] 



W$t goung Jftan'g £ffaft# 

down in uncleanness and dishonor— the young 
fellow was too weak to stand up. He has met 
many a young man in business life and pulled 
him aside into dishonesty and deceit, — the 
young man's will went lame just at the wrong 
time. He has taken the capacity of many a 
young man for the higher, finer things in his 
home life, social life, religious life, and 
squeezed it all out of him, — the man could 
not seem to resist the encroachment of the 
lower upon the higher. 

Let me say to you right here that not a man 
of them all needed to go down in moral de- 
feat. He — the same One who said " On this I 
build " — is able to keep anything committed 
to Him, honesty, integrity, aspiration for the 
best! In His fellowship all the nobler inter- 
ests of your life are entirely safe. You can 
find Him, know Him, and grow to be like Him 
if you will, through the worship, the fellow- 
ship and the service of the church He came 
to build. 

You need it! If you will honestly feel the 

pulse of your moral life and take the tem- 

[152] 



f fe op&urclj 



perature of your enthusiasm for righteous- 
ness you will know that you need it just as 
you know that you need food. The young 
man who sleeps until nine-thirty Sunday 
morning, then stuffs his mind full of a bulky 
Sunday paper, crammed with matter hastily 
written, meant to be hastily read, and still 
more hastily forgotten, not a line of it above 
the common-place and most of it fathoms 
below; then eats a big dinner at one or two 
o'clock; then spends the afternoon in out- 
door sports or social diversion; then devotes 
the evening to cards or light chit-chat with 
nothing of spiritual aspiration in it, — the 
young man who thus allows his Sundays to 
slip through his fingers with nothing delib- 
erately chosen and wisely adjusted to make 
him more reverent, more aspiring, more un- 
selfish, more resolute, is not developing the 
moral fiber he needs. He may or may not 
become openly immoral in the years ahead, 
but at best he is so much dead weight to be 
carried along by the more aspiring elements 
of the community. 

[153] 



C^e poimg jHan'g affair 

Take the words of Lecky, the historian, who 
is as far from being a narrow ecclesiastic as 
any man you can name — " What institution 
is there on earth, 55 he said, " which is doing 
as much to furnish ideals and motives for the 
individual life by its moral appeal; to guide 
and purify the emotions through its well- 
appointed worship; to promote those habits 
of thought and desire which rise above the 
things of earth; to bestow comfort in old 
age, in sorrow, in disappointment; to keep 
alive a sense of that higher and further world 
to which we go, as is the Christian Church." 
You need all that — claim it in full measure, 
genuinely and steadily by openly sharing in 
and identifying yourself with its wholesome 
life! 

Take the voluntary testimony of three manly 
men, — Stanley, the intrepid explorer ; Bis- 
marck, the resolute statesman ; Stevenson, the 
splendid writer; none of them by his calling 
professionally pledged to sound the praises 
of religion. 

Hear Stanley — " Lost in the African jungle, 
[ 154] 



f (3 €t)uvd) 



constrained at the darkest hour to humbly 
confess myself helpless without God's help, I 
vowed a vow in the forest wilds that I would 
confess His aid before men, I besought Him 
to give me back my people. Nine hours later 
we were exulting with a rapturous joy. I 
am utterly unable to attribute our salvation 
to any other cause than a gracious Pro- 
vidence." 

Hear Bismarck — "If I were no longer a 
Christian I would not serve the King another 
hour. If I did not put my trust in God, I 
should certainly place none in earthly mas- 
ters. If I did not believe in a Divine Provi- 
dence which has ordained this German nation 
to be something good and great, I would give 
up my trade as a statesman. Deprive me of 
this faith and you deprive me of my father- 
land." 

Hear Stevenson — " Of that great change 
which decided all this part of my life, turn- 
ing me from one whose business it was to 
shirk into one whose business it was to strive 
and persevere, it seems to me as though it 
[ 155 ] 



C^e poxwg jiiatt'g affairs 

had all been done by some one else. I came 
about like a well-handled ship. There stood 
at the helm that Unknown Steersman, whom 
we call God." These manly men of thought, 
of action, of high purpose, needed that higher 
something. You need it. Every man needs 
it. 

The other thing I want to say is — the church 
needs you. The color of life with you is red 
— may it be for years to come! We want 
that shade here. The church whose prevail- 
ing color is blue, deep navy blue perhaps, is 
doomed, — it has already lost its power of 
appeal to the young, and the end of its use- 
fulness is only a matter of time. 
" Religion is not a funeral announcement. " 
There are religious leaders who seem to be 
always saying - — " Let us cry." They have 
gotten the wrong phrase and the wrong mood. 
When you begin to talk about faith and God, 
do not turn the corners of your mouth down. 
Face all these matters as naturally, as joy- 
ously, as genuinely, as you would face any 
other interest in life. 

[156] 



$i$ €t)Uttl) 



This is the time for you to be a Christian and 
to be putting in the best service of your 
life. The impulses of the heart are warmer, 
stronger and readier now than they will be 
twenty years hence. A man who postpones 
becoming a Christian until he has one foot 
in the grave, usually postpones it until they 
are both there. Do it now ! " On this I will 
build " — and the corner stone of His con- 
fidence was consecrated youth ! 
Here is a word of authority and of ex- 
perience; it comes from an older man, but 
it rings true. " I beseech you, men " — 
brethren, he says, but it is all the same, — 
" 1 beseech you men by the mercies of God 
that you present your bodies a living," — not 
decrepit, nor diseased, nor half dead, but a 
" living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God 
for this is your reasonable service." And so 
it is! You would feel almost ashamed to go 
to your Maker offering Him the core of your 
life, all the best parts of it eaten away by the 
lapse of unconsecrated years. Bring it with 
the fullness of its promise and strength upon 
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C^e gomtg jttan'g affair 

it, saying " Here am I, use me to make the 
world a better place for all hands. 5 ' 
You say that you are not good enough to 
join the church. If you mean by that, you 
are openly or secretly doing what you know 
is wrong and that you intend to keep on, you 
are dead right. You are not good enough — 
we do not want you in our membership. No 
church does! If on the contrary you mean 
that you are not as good as you intend to be 
sometime, that you are striving to conquer 
temptation, to see your duty steadily and 
whole, and do it, that you intend to grow 
at last into that finer, higher manhood you 
have in your mind's eye, then you are good 
enough. The church reaches out a long, 
strong arm to welcome you. On this firm 
and manly purpose He will build individual 
character and the better world that is to 
be. 

There is Some One waiting for the response 
which it lies within you to make at once if 
you will. My college mate, living now in New 
York, tells me this story. He knew a man who 
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1^(0 €fyutty 



in his boyhood grew tired of home and ran 
away. He followed the sea and for ten years 
went before the mast, becoming coarse, hard 
and brutal. Never once in all that time did he 
write a letter home. He supposed they would 
give him up as dead. Finally, homesickness 
caught him and he resolved to return to his 
native land. He sailed into the great harbor, 
and then took a skiff and rowed across to the 
little inlet where the old home had stood. He 
wondered if they were all dead. He was 
ashamed to be seen in the daytime, and waited 
for nightfall. He then rowed toward the fa- 
miliar landing, but he saw a light and some 
one moving on the shore. He did not want 
to meet strangers, so he pulled out into the 
bay again. He came back at ten, but the 
light was still there. He rowed off and 
waited until eleven, and then came back, but 
the light was still there and some one was 
trimming it. He drew near to the shore, 
and behold it was his father, gray-bearded, 
weary-eyed, heavy-hearted, who that night 
and every night for the ten years had placed 
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C^e poxmg pian'$ affair 

a lantern to guide and welcome his returning 
son, for whom he had ever watched and 
prayed. 

God is like that ! He is a Father and no child 
is ever lost from the thought of His infinite 
mind, from the gracious purposes of His lov- 
ing heart ! He waits for the return of every 
soul coming up to Him in consecration that 
He may build each life into His gracious plan 
to make this world a splendid section of His 
everlasting kingdom ! 



[160] 



3350 










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